Talk:Contra dance choreography

References: sources and citations
It would be great to get citations to about five or so published books on contra dance choreography. Ted Sannella, Tony Parkes, and Larry Jennings come to mind as likely candidates. Also useful for the lead article too, to rescue the article from the eventual "no references" challenge. -- Yellowdesk 07:35, 10 March 2007 (UTC)

Lead section
The Lead section seems too detailed to me. Its last 3 paragraphs could be moved to a new "Structure" (or "Structure of a contra dance") section to be placed immediately below the lead. A summary of that section could then be added back to the lead. This may or may not require re-thinking which part(s) of this article are used in Contra_dance. Your thoughts? --rich


 * I'd say go for it, but I'd advise against "Structure of a contra dance…" — "form" itself is already a term made up for WP, and we don't need to muddy things even more. I'd say "Overview," if we had to give it a name, but you could just keep it as it is (without a title) and force the table of contents to appear above it.


 * Thanks, Eitch. Based on your first sentence, I'll look forward to working on this "real soon now". You've got me now leaning toward "Terminology", which I don't love, but think is appropriate enough. We'll see what fits when it's done, and if someone changes it, no biggie, but for the record I can't warm up to either "Overview" (because I don't think that's what it would be) or to leaving it nameless (I'm sure we can find some title that fits). Anyway, this is what I like about differing opinions, for you got me to think of alternatives. --rich

Contra Corners diagrams
Regarding the contra corners diagram in this article, and the more detailed diagram (linked from there), there is a discussion of issues and alternatives at the Contra Corners Diagram topic on the main contra dance talk page. --rich

Petronella
A clap at the end of Petronella is not an embellishment (ie. adding something where before there was nothing), it is an alteration of the move. Rather than finishing the turn by taking hands and pulling into a balance, people are standing alone clapping. Clapping makes the move a bit more solitary, less of a group activity in that it removes a physical connection. Plus, if someone the group is clapping, those on both sides of the clapper can't fulfill the move as it was intended. -- astro46

The status of the clap as "embellishment" or as "alteration" needs to be established by independent source, as should the "controversy" surrounding these statements. It's clear to those in the contra dance community that certain people are opinionated about this move and its putative effect on the dance. However, none of the statements to this effect will be clear to outsiders (i.e., typical users of Wikipedia) and hence, reference to this should be avoided unless external substantiation is provided. Even invocation of the "folk process" is suspect. Some callers suggest Ralph Page may have taught the move this way, but consultation of Page's writings (some of which are digitized here: http://www.izaak.unh.edu/dlp/NorthernJunket/pages/index.htm) only reveals a difference in old-timers and new-timers (in Page's generation) about the ORDER of the balance and the turn in the move (see http://www.izaak.unh.edu/dlp/NorthernJunket/pages/NJv10/NJv10-02/NJv.10.02.p19.htm). This might be rather more relevant to the problems that dancers experience with this move. 24.1.104.69 (talk) 15:46, 3 August 2013 (UTC)

Missing figures
Some more possible figures to add to this page: 192.231.106.2 (talk) 23:32, 29 March 2016 (UTC)
 * Pull by
 * Rory slide right/left in waves
 * Give and take -- figure added in a revision on December 26, 2018
 * Star promenade
 * Square through
 * Weave the line
 * Orbit
 * Slice/yearn
 * Pass the ocean
 * Ricochet hey
 * Ones lead down the center, return, hand cast
 * Circulate
 * Pousette
 * Promenade (single file)
 * Gypsy star
 * Arch/dive
 * Lady around two/gent cut through
 * Ones down the outside, return (as in Chorus Jig)
 * I added pull by and slide right/left, and have struck those which have now been added. Several of the other figures I suspect are obscure enough that they do not need listing in this article – how often do contra dances really include a gypsy star, for instance?  Others could probably be usefully mentioned as variants of more common figures (ricochet hey?)  Only a couple on this list (square through, slice, maybe pass the ocean) strike me as obvious ommissions, and in my experience callers often don't refer to any of those figures by name, rather describing them in terms of other figures (e.g. square through as a sequence of pulls by right and left; pass the ocean as "pass through and make a wave"). Caeciliusinhorto-public (talk) 13:01, 23 January 2023 (UTC)

merging sublists
Until now, the list of figures has been divided into solo and couples' figures on the one hand, and figures for four or more on the other. I have merged the two. I was unable to fit my full reasoning into an edit summary, so I'm explaining here: In sum, the division seemed to me to be causing more problems than it solved. Caeciliusinhorto-public (talk) 16:02, 30 September 2022 (UTC)
 * It seems to me much more likely that someone will use this list knowing what a figure is called but not for how many people it is for than vice-versa, so it seems to make more sense to sort it such that someone who knows what the figure is called can most easily find its description.
 * The actual distinction between solo/couples' figures and figures for four or more seems pretty arbitrary. A better division would be between solo figures, couples' figures, minor set figures, and major set figures.  It is not at all clear to me why we would conceptually group couples' and solo figures together, rather than e.g. grouping couples' figures with minor-set figures: it seems that the main point of difference between a solo figure and a minor set figure is that minor set figures involve interactions between dancers, and this is also true of couples' figures!
 * Even if some sort of distinction of this sort were at all useful, the difficulties seem to outweigh the advantages. Even in the article as it was, there was evidence of confusion (I have no idea why "give and take" or "pass through" were classified as being for four or more dancers!), and there are figures where the classification is unclear (what to do with three-person figures like the Right Hand High/Left Hand Low?  should a balance really be classified as a couple's figure when the definition mentions balancing rings and wavy lines?  Does it really make sense to classify Down the Hall Four in Line as a completely different figure from the Active Couple Down the Hall seen in dances like Chorus Jig?)