Last night was the first contra dance meeting of the month. The band was white squall who consisted of Andrew Grover (fiddle), Ned Quist, yes Ned Quist at Brown in Orwig who plays guitar, and Ned's wife who plays precussion. She utilized some very interesting instruments which I will question her about later on in my interview with them. The caller (the person responsible for calling out the steps of the dance) for the night was Chris Ricciotti, and the dance took place in Sayles Hall. The attendance was fairly large with a 50/50 mix of students and non-students consisting of a vast variety of ages (even some pre-teens). I will admit that I entered the situation not wanting to participate in the dance , but several of the participants were not having it, lol! So, I joined in, and it was very enjoyable. One woman remarked, "How on earth can you study it without doing it!" It wasn't that I was never going to participate, but I didn't plan on doing it so soon. Better now than never I guess. In a conversation that I had with one of the participants (A middle aged woman), she said that the contra dance was therapeutic for her and that it served as a wonderful outlet during a trialing time in her life.
All of the songs were in 4/4 time which was ideal for the types of moves involved in the dance. The style was reminiscent of Appalachian/ Bluegrass/ Cajun tunes which all derived from an American adapted mix of folk Scottish/Irish/ British music. Two of the song's names I recorded were Ricky Hill's City Swing and Ted Sheneller (?) Love and Kisses. Most of the dances took place with 2 lanes of dancers. Each lane had two rows made up of dancing pairs across from one another. One dance consisted of everyone in a circle. The following are a few bits of dance vocabulary used in the contra dance that night:
hands four- four people hold hands in a circle
swing - swinging/turning in a circle with your partner
promenade- take one of your partner's hands in the back and one in the front and
walk them in a line
turn 'em round- turn partner in a circle
allemande- *to be defined when I get a better definition*
return to the one you left behind- return to your partner
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ReplyDeleteGreat topic David, and I really enjoyed reading your fieldnotes. I've never been to the Brown contradancing, but I've been to a bunch up in Vermont. I would guess that people in the Brown group have very different associations with contradancing than a lot of the people up in primarily rural small towns in Vermont do. It seems to me that the thing that's really interesting about this particular contradance is that it's a primarily rural dance style being performed in Providence at an Ivy League university. From my experiences, at a small town contradance, everyone knows everyone, a lot of people work with each other during the day, and the contradance can be the weekly social gathering where people unwind (as opposed to the town hall meeting where the same people might gather with more on the line). It might be interesting to look at these Brown contradances on specifically Brown terms, noting the discrepancy between the context in which the dance originated and the context in which people are now participating in it. The one nice bridge I notice between the contradances I've been to and the one you went to is that it's kind of a family affair: I once went to a dance where the caller was this very elderly man and the instrumentalists were his daughter, her husband, and their daughter. Cool that Ned Quist and his wife are in this group together. I wonder where they got their start playing the music.
ReplyDeleteThat’s really interesting that you were forced to participate! It’s almost as if the group knows how to best understand them, probably because they get a lot of newcomers every time they meet and are used to getting them involved.
ReplyDeleteI also really like the definitions – it seems like such a simple thing, but I remember going to the Contra Dance once last year on a whim with my housemates and I had absolutely no idea what was going on, so I’m impressed that you managed to figure those out. Looking back I don’t think I even realized that there were terms for it all; I think I just watched the older people who knew what they were doing.
It’ll also probably be really interesting to compare the different groups that play at the dances and how that changes the atmosphere (or not). I think they have someone new every time…?
Some of the musical observations here are suggestive - as you point out, the music is fairly "simple," intentionally designed to foster participation, while providing some variety via the different moves that are called out. Surely this is related to your observation that whole families come by these events to participate - how many musical traditions, in the US anyway, work that way? It makes me wonder to what extent there is a conscious ideology of accessibility attached to this musical scene - I think there is, but I wonder how overtly it is held. Also, like Tim, I wonder about the different profiles of the music groups that come onto this scene - are they professionals? Semi-professionals? Is there a fixed repertoire? How much leeway is there to get crazy with the music - you point out that it is related to bluegrass and other kinds of Appalachian tradition, which can get pretty virtuosic: does that happen here? And what is the balance between dancing and listening here - is dancing construed, as it sometimes is, as a kind of "deep listening" that involves the entire body in musical perception and response to sonic stimulus? That is, do different kinds of musical inflection register differently in the kinds of dancing people do, do better performers (and how is that determined?) make for a more satisfying and/or more demonstrative evening of dancing?
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