MIT Contra; 48 bar dance

May 9th, 2012
calling, contra
I had a great time calling the MIT dance last night to great music by La Banane Enchantee. The wanted to play some crazy tunes, and while for most of them they didn't ask first, one was half again as long as a normal tune and they were polite and checked. Seeing as they were gracious enough to let me know in advance, I figured I ought to oblige and assembled a 48 bar contra for them. I used Don Flaherty's Heartbeat Contra as a starting point to get:

A1 (8) Ring Balance, Petronella
(8) Ring Balance, Petronella
A2 (16) Ring Balance, Neighbor Swing
B1 (8) Ladies Gypsy Right 1.5x
(8) Partner Swing
B2 (8) Long Lines
(8) Gents Gypsy Left 2x
C1 (16) Partner Balance and Swing
C2 (8) Circle Left 3/4
(8) Ring Balance, Partner California Twirl

The added section is the:

B2 (8) Long Lines
(8) Gents Gypsy Left 2x
C1 (16) Partner Balance and Swing

The goal was to add something interesting that didn't add too much to the mental burden. I did find I needed to keep prompting some of the figures in the Ladies/Lines/Gents section longer than usual, but people learned them. Most people didn't seem to notice anything was different. Just one of the dancers who is also a musician.

It made a good dance to end the first half with.

Comment via: google plus, facebook, substack

Recent posts on blogs I like:

I have a baby

I am pleased to announce the existence of the newest and smallest effective altruist, Seretse Benjamin Brennan.

via Thing of Things November 2, 2026

“We should be more ambitious with the software we build”

Since early this year, Michael Malis (of pgrust) has been showing me interesting things he's done and saying [W]e should be more ambitious1 with the software we build There is, understandably, a lot of skepticism about projects like pgrust because there…

via Posts on October 24, 2026

Was the HuggingFace hacking incident scheming?

In July 2026, internal OpenAI agents hacked HuggingFace (HF) in order to figure out how their evaluation grader works. This involved a thousand agents coordinating on an improvised message board to carry out an elaborate sequence of exploits. A later grou…

via Victoria Krakovna October 18, 2026

more     (via openring)