I just went over to the Gulf Wars site looking for an A&S classes lineup, and instead found a schedule of dances for the nightly balls.  Woohoo!

Except I don’t know hardly any of these.  I have learned so far, a pavan, Korobushka, and the Black Nag.  As I expect I’ll throw myself madly into learning dances, I figure I’d better take notes.

The Black Nag.  Here’s a cheat sheet.   But what do all those terms mean, "slip" and "siding" and "hey"?

"Slip" – is what a ballet teacher calls "chasse’" – even little children do these gallops around the room.  You can gallop front and back, but mostly you chasse’ sideways.  Which is what "slipping" is.

"Siding" – is a step-together, step-together (that’s a "double", or a chasse’ in slow-motion) to slip your shoulders parallel to your partner’s, back-to-back.  Then you do the other side.

"Hey" – is what American square dancers call an "alamande".  I am well familiar with this one, as it looks wonderful in choreography.  In the Black Nag, since there’s an odd number of people doing it, you have to cheat at the end, and discard one of your grips, so you come back around to the line with the corrent hand, i.e., the one you just used.  I can’t tell you how many hours of my life have been spent waiting through arguments about why the alamande isn’t working, and it’s all because whoever’s in charge has forgotten to use their math brain.  (And for some reason they think shouting will fix it.  ~sigh)  At least in FP, it wasn’t 3 am with theater call at 10 the same morning.  Ay-eye.

We did the Black Nag, complete with the apparently requisite arguing, last FP, and it was lots of fun.  Of course I wanted to do sixteen repetitions of the whole thing, but as I wasn’t on an end, I wasn’t getting winded by the diagonal changing places part, and therefore was overruled.  Next time I should take an end position.

And next practice, we need to focus on these lists!  I see Hole in the Wall on there twice, and lots of bramsles, and Amoroso twice…I suppose I could take responsibility and read ahead on the cheat sheets.  Cool how many of these dances are done with only a few people.