Maya Calls

Learn to call contra dances with me!

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Calling with Friends

February 6, 2023 / / 0 Comments
Photo by Maya Roe

On February 5th, Anne Glover, a local caller, organized a caller practice session in a local hall. The practice session had about 15 dancers and 5 callers who are working on honing their craft. For two of the callers, it was their first time calling. It felt nice to work with some people who are just starting out because I could see how far I have already come in my calling journey in less than a year!

I called two dances that I have learned recently: Orono Special and Petronella. Here are my reflections on how those dances went.

Orono Special

Orono Special is a simple Tony Parkes dance. I learned it because I had a hunch that Anne might ask me to call the first dance of the program. And I was right. It is a very easy dance to call and all of the dancers (including our one beginner) picked up on it early. My one criticism is that it is a little boring. Hopefully, in the next caller practice session, I can choose a slightly more stimulating first dance to try.

Petronella

Petronella is a traditional dance. It was the first dance that used a figure where minor sets (groups of four dancers) balance their ring and move one place to the right every eight counts. In contemporary dances, this figure is actually called a “Petronella turn.” I enjoyed learning an adaptation of a dance that is considered a classic. There was a moment during the walk-through when the dancers got confused, and I was proud that I was able to work with them through that moment of confusion and resolve the issues.

Essex Reel

On top of the dances that I called independently, I also helped one of my friends start calling a dance using some of my dance cards. I brought the dancers through the walk through and called the beginning of the dance before passing it off to a friend. It was nice to do that because it was a good exercise in being adaptable.

Over all, I am looking forward to call for another caller practice with the same people next week. We are hoping that next week we will have a live band, which will be great because I need to work on communicating with musicians.

Resources for New Contra Dance Callers

January 27, 2023 / / 0 Comments

As a new contra dance caller, I have been working hard to find dances and resources on calling. At this point, I have found a few, so I created an interactive video with some of my online resources.

My New Dances

As I promised last week, I am back with new dances. I pulled together five new dances that I hope to learn before my next calling opportunity (on February 4th). My newest dances are:

With Thanks to The Dean – Steve Zakon- Anderson

I found this dance this fall when I was dancing at the Victoria Contra Dance this fall. I fell in love with this dance because it is a double progression (meaning that dancers move through two minor sets each time the band plays the tune). Double progression dances are often quite difficult, so I was pleased that this one was accessible. I asked the caller for the name after the dance.

Heart of Glass – Carey Ravitz

I found this dance when Eric Curl was calling Victoria Contra Dance on January 28th. Eric called a variation of this dance called Fly Away by Roberta Kogut. Both dances feature a star promenade and a butterfly whirl which are figures that I would like to learn to call. After the dance, Eric let me take a photo of his dance card. I chose to learn Heart of Glass rather than Fly Away because Heart of Glass is a very popular dance that I have danced many times.

Hands holding a dance card with the calls for the dance Fly Away by Roberta Kogut
Fly Away by Roberta Kogut

Orono Special – Tony Parkes

This is an easy dance that I already had in my caller box because it was a dance that Rosemary had called many times. I knew that she loved this dance because the dance card was bent.

Awesome Double Progression Dance – Donna Calhoun

This dance was already in Rosemary’s calling box and it has a double progression. I learned about it from Rosemary and the Rising Contra Dance Callers Collective facebook page.

Petronella- Traditional

Petronella is a traditional contra dance that people still love to dance today. The version of Petronella that I am learning to call is a variation to the traditional (some people call the variation “Citronella”). I am learning the adapted version because it is a bit easier to call, but it still contains the balance the ring and twirl figure that made the dance a classic.

Finding My Dances

January 23, 2023 / / 2 Comments

My first step when I decided in the spring of 2022 that I wanted to become a contra dance caller was to learn the basics of calling. I did this in two ways. First, I met with two local contra callers in Victoria for advice. Rosemary Lach and Anne Glover both gave me valuable feedback and resources for learning to call contra dances.

I was absolutely shocked when Rosemary offered to give me her collection of contra dances that she had been collecting over the years. Contra callers must be intimately familiar with all of their dances, and the box of dances that Rosemary gave me represented a lifetime of collecting dances. Each of the cards in the box pictured below is a dance, and learning them all is quite a daunting task!

With Rosemary’s dance cards in hand, I was ready to learn a few dances! To learn a dance, a caller must rehearse their instructions while listening to the phrasing of music, until they can fit the dances to the phrase. So far, I have been able to learn four dances. Two of the dances were from Rosemary’s dance box, one was a dance that I tried at a Victoria contra dance and loved, and the last was a dance from a book that I heard was very easy (it was).

So far, I can call

Essex Reel (Tony Parks)

Jefferson Reel (Dudley Briggs)

Simplicity Swing (Becky Hill)

In the coming week, I hope to learn a few new dances that I tried dancing recently and liked.

Photo by Ardian Lumi

What Is Contra Dancing?

January 23, 2023 / / 0 Comments

Contra dancing is a style of partner dancing with roots in English country dancing. It evolved in New England during the early colonization of North America, and has survived through the generations because it is a great way to maintain community, make friends, and keep traditional fiddle tunes relevant . Contra dancing is a “called dance” like line dancing or square dancing, meaning that there is one person giving directions to a group of dancers during the dance. Contra dancing is composed of a series of nested figures. There are figures that one person alone will perform, figures that partners will perform, figures that groups of four will perform, and figures that the entire line of dancers will perform. These nested interactions make contra dance a rich opportunity for dancers to interact with everyone in the hall in a structured way. Although Contra dance has many aspects that have remained the same for more than a century, it is also constantly adapting to suit the needs and desires of new dancers. Contra dancing has grown over the years in ways that represent North America’s changing understandings of gender roles, gender, relationships, consent, and community.

I started contra dancing when my college roommate (who is now a professional contra dance musician) took me to a dance. I immediately fell in love. Five years of dancing later, that same roommate suggested to me that I should learn to call contra dances, after I complained to her about the lack of contra callers in the Victoria area.

Photo by Green Chameleon

Using ChatGPA To Teach Editing

January 20, 2023 / / 0 Comments

When I was a student, I worked at my university’s writing center. In this job, I learned to edit student work, helping first year students edit their first assignments and supporting masters’ students as they edited their thesis. I noticed that students persistently made the same mistakes and struggled to edit their own work.

Although talking in class about ChatGPA made me a little worried for the future of plagiarism, it also inspired me to think of new ways to help students learn editing skills.

When students are assigned essays they are often so exhausted by their topic that by the time they reach the editing stage, they find that they have no energy to read their essay over. With ChatGPA, student can instantly create an essay on any topic they like and spend the majority of their time working on editing the essay.

At this moment, it seems like ChatGPA and other AI content generating software represent the direction that school is moving. And if that is true, then teachers need to radically rethink technology in the classroom. Teachers need to help students work collaboratively with AI, rather than competing with it.

However, the future is far from set in stone. Sometimes, designing curriculum feels like writing science fiction. We are reaching forward with our words, trying to imagine a world that has never existed before.

When I think about curriculum development, I feel torn between preparing students for the future that will come if society follows current trends and the best possible future that I could hope for for my students. I want to believe that if I keep both of these in mind, my students will be prepared for a future somewhere between those two poles.

All of this is to say that although I am a bit of a tech resistant curmudgen who wants to teach her students to start fires in the woods and knit, I suppose that AI is here to stay, and I believe that using ChatGPA to teach editing skills will equip our students for the science fiction future we are writing.

January 20, 2023 / / 0 Comments

My name is Maya Roe. I am a beginning contra dance caller based in the traditional territory of the lək̓ʷəŋən-speaking and W̱SÁNEĆ people on Southern Vancouver Island.

I am creating this blog as a virtual home for my journey toward becoming a contra dance caller.

image showing person walking in pre-painted footprints
Photo by Flickr user jfchenier under CC license: BY-NC 2.0

Welcome and Introduction

September 9, 2020 / / 0 Comments

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