Small Petronella

August 30th, 2006
dancing
This was a little while ago but I didn't remember to write about it then. At the last thursday dance I was at in Concord (8/17) they called a dance with a variant of the Petronella turn. Each person, with only their neighbor (on the side of the set) repeatedly balances and spins one place to the right. So the hands four goes from a square to a line to a square to a line. Instead of doing the last of the turns, the balance was followed by a box-the-gnat and half a hey. The figure was not introduced as a kind of petronella.

Usually there is scattered and unsynchronized clapping after spins during the walk through. This time there was no clapping. I took this to mean people didn't take it to be a petronella turn, and instead were thinking of it differently somehow.

During the first few times through the dance, there was no clapping at all. Then, perhaps four times through, there started to be some clapping. The clapping built over the next few times, to a point about half of what you usually get on petronellas. Then it seemed to diminish some as more people started swinging their neighbor instead of doing the balance and turn (the dance had no neighbor swing).

Anyways, it was very interesting to be watching.

Comment via: substack

Recent posts on blogs I like:

Retrospective on life tracking and effectiveness systems

I’ve been doing life tracking for around 10 years, and this post is looking back at some things I learned from the data (since my previous retrospective in 2017). I also review various productivity / effectiveness systems I have tried and which ones have …

via Victoria Krakovna July 4, 2025

Linkpost for June

Effective altruism, policy, social justice, reality's surprising amount of detail, short stories

via Thing of Things July 2, 2025

Elixir's Last Dance

On May 18th, the contra dance band Elixir had their last gig ever. The dance was packed: there were three hundred people. It was the only dance BIDA has ever done where they sold tickets. People flew from across the country just to hear Elixir play one la…

via Lily Wise's Blog Posts June 5, 2025

more     (via openring)