Cincinnati, OH 2023-10-14

One of the great glossary dances. Simple figures and gentle timing, but not so comprehensive that it leaves you with no options to make the second dance feel distinctive. Definitely a favorite of mine.

I was taking a course on gender and sexuality at the time I wrote this. The title is a double pun; "Contra is essential" is one meaning, "against cultural/biological essentialism" is another.

While this was originally written as a sawtooth dance and I've listed it here as such, it might be better to teach this as a clockwise becket dance with a slide left at the beginning as dancers have become better at moving back to the posts for the partner swing after the give and take.

Cary notes:

"The central figures of this dance, A2 and B1, are borrowed from Ted Sannella's Fiddleheads.

You can run this as an alternating dance (as in Alternating Corners by Jim Kitch). On even cycles, after the neighbor swing, twos cross the set, turn left, etc. Gentlespoons face down and ladles face up in the initial diamonds, and after the partner swings (both versions), ones face down and twos face up."

Gene's Notes: "Any doubts I had about this dance were erased after I had a chance to dance it once. This has got to be one of the smoothest dances I have seen in a long while and which you must experience to fully appreciate. My goal in writing this dance was to create a Becket formation dance with both a partner swing and a neighbor swing. Halliehurst is a splendid old mansion on the grounds of Davis & Elkins College in Elkins, West Virginia on whose front porch many impromptu contra dances have taken place."

(source: http://www.quiteapair.us/calling/acdol/dance/acd_59.html)

I generally think of a full chain as something to write into a dance as a way to fill time in the absence of a better idea, but Gene proves with this dance that it can serve a purpose. This dance has some of the absolute best momentum I've ever experienced, and it all comes back to the windup from the full chain. Consider shifting the opening of the dance to the B1 so that the partner swing comes at the end of the dance. That way the momentum buildup is uninterrupted middance.

Cary Ravitz notes: This dance is an easier version of Through the Looking Glass, or you
might see it as Amy Kahn's Sweet Music with a different progression,
or Steve Zakon-Anderson's Twirling at the Alter with the progression
moved from the hey to the circle, or David Zinkin's Becky's Becket
with a different A2.

http://www.dance.ravitz.us/dance2011.htm#hg