Yesterday we went to the bethlehem contra. Much fun. The band was the Brazen Hussies and the caller was Tori Barone (who has called at Swarthmore twice I think). The music was very good, but a lot of what made the night fun were silly things.

The dance before the break I convinced people to play 'the game' (I don't know if there is another name for it. This name is not very helpful). People who want to play be consecutive twos so they move through the dance together, then people can switch with any person who's playing. This dance had a 'ladies aleman right 1.5' which was very good for gents switching around. We also started near the top of the set but not right at the top, so that for a lot of the dance we were dancing with other people who were playing and could switch with anyone in the hands-four. Whee.

The dance after the break Tori and Bob Isaacs called a dance together. Well, more like in opposition. There were two sets and each of them walked through and called a different dance. The dances were chosen to have offset balances, so one line balanced, then the other. We were supposed to try and balance louder than the other line. It was confusing at first, especially when they called right at the same time. The most confusing thing for me, really, was remembering that the dance ended with a ladies chain. See, both dances had ladies chains at the end, and when I heard the caller for the other line calling ladies chain I knew that we had any figure except a ladies chain. Really fun once people had the dance, though. I think the dances were something like:

		Tori's Line		Bobs Line
A1	(4)	Inside hand balance Neighbor	(4)	Ladies to the center
	(4)	Twirl to swap	(4)	Balance wave
	(4)	Inside hand balance Partner	(4)	Ladies out, men in
	(4)	Twirl to swap	(4)	Balance wave
A2	(4)	Inside hand balance Neighbor		?
	(4)	Twirl to swap
	(8)	Gents aleman 1.5
B1	(16)	Dosido and Swing Partner		?
B2	(8)	Long Lines	(8)	Right and Left Through
	(8)	Ladies Chain	(8)	Ladies Chain

Me and my partner did the B1 with a balance instead of a dosido, maximizing balances and noise.

The last dance I danced tandem with Victor and Chris, which was fun, though a 'ladies dosido 1.5' requires extremely precise pivoting to complete on time. While we were out at the top we noticed that kloveco was sitting out, so we danced as the four of us, tandem pairs. At one point we got confused to where to go and we ended up divided 3-1 instead of 2-2. And then tried to dosido. Didn't go so well. Other dancers didn't seem to mind, though I don't think I'd seen anyone dance tandem at bethlehem before.

People were generally very playful.