My Dances

I usually write dances to meet a specific need or satisfy a particular curiosity.

In the 2020-21 pandemic, I wrote an enormous number of dances that explored the new or nuanced possibilities presented by trying to dance a fundamentally social and explicitly connected dance form while alone.

More recently, I’ve become interested in the implicit invitation offered by modern urban contra conventions to move beyond gendered — or even binary — dance roles. I call these new-style duple minor dances ‘arky’; each dancer dances from every position in the hands-four.

Duple minor contra/Becket/arky formations

Cake and Cow, 2021
Duple minor improper contra
A1 Right-hand star three places; partner swing on the side
A2 Balance across and square through two (stay connected); two facing in, allemande R 1.5
B1 Neighbor meltdown swing on the side
B2 Right shoulder hey for four across

This dance originated as a solo dance during the covid-19 pandemic; it was written to mark my birthday, which I celebrated in the company of a toy cow made of rubber.

Cup of Tea, 2022
Duple minor contra: step into a line of four, Rsh to N Rsh, and ends face in to begin
A1 In the middle, allemande left once and a half; pass partner right for half a hey
A2 Partner balance and swing
B1 Pass through across and twirl to face in; long lines forward and back
B2 Right-hand star three places; neighbour do-si-do once and a half

Don't Look Back, 2022
Duple minor contra
A1 In a ring, balance and spin to the LEFT; balance again, and spin to the left
A2 Chain by the left to a partner swing (no courtesy turn)
B1 In a ring, balance, and spin to the left; balance again, and spin to the left
B2 (Others) chain by the left; partner LEFT-hand balance and square through two

Jane's Right Knee, written with Anna Spearing-Ewyn for Jane Curry, 2022
Duple minor contra
A1 With your neighbour, see-saw and anti-clockwise swing (handhold remains the same, although it might feel surprising)
A2 Face across: chain by the right; same two start half a hey
B1 Left shoulder into a meltdown (anticlockwise) swing
B2 In a ring, balance and partner roll away with a half sashay (doesn't matter who goes through the middle); right-hand star to new neighbours

Kyriarky, 2025
Arky Becket (partners swap sides each time through)
The 'swing rule' in this dance is that your pointy hand is the one already connected to the person you're about to swing.
A1 [Slide left and] Circle left three places to a neighbour swing
A2 Right and left through across; chain (by the right) to partner
B1 Circle right all the way; in a ring, balance, and spin to the right one place
B2 Circle left three places to a partner swing

Kyriarky was written thanks to Andrew Swaine's prompt for the dance competition at May Heydays ('write a dance that lends itself to being called gender-free'), and Heather McAslan's suggestion that we create a dance for Contra Camp that swapped people over each time through. I decided against submitting it to Andrew's competition because I worried it wouldn't meet the brief of being accessible to the (relatively conservative, gender-wise) dance club audience that constitutes the majority of that weekend's attendees. Coincidentally, though, Sam Tetley Smith -- clearly more of an optimist than me! -- did submit a dance to the competition with the same structure and it came in third place. (As I feared, dancers who only dance one role struggled with both the concept and the phenomenology of swapping pointy hands.) Several dancers at Contra Camp particularly enjoyed it, and one suggested it struck them as the formation of the future. I like it because it essentially mandates positional calling and dancing, as keeping up with which 'role' you are is far too much effort!

And a note about the title of the dance: 'kyriarchy' is an umbrella term for the intersecting structures that create oppression (like, for instance, gendered calling!), and 'arky' is a square dance term that was also used by contra dancers in the late 20th century to describe a dance or a figure in which gendered dancers 'swap' roles to dance on the other side. I've been told it originated in the 1950s, derived from a variant on the square 'Texas Star' called 'Arkansas Star', in which couples do the Texas Star figure from a half-sashayed position.

The Reminder, 2019, revised 2021
Duple minor contra
A1 Neighbour right-hand balance and allemande halfway; left-hand chain across the set
A2 Same two pass left: hey all the way
B1 With your partner, meltdown swing
B2 Long lines forward and back; on the diagonal (same two who chained and began the hey), see-saw once and a half to a new neighbour

Spin to the Left, 2022
Duple minor contra; 48-bar tune
A1 (In long waves, N in Rh) Rory O'More
A2 N balance and swing
B1 Chain by the right; pass R for half a hey
B2 In a ring, balance and spin to the LEFT; again
C1 With your partner, balance and swing
C2 Chain by the right; left-hand star to long waves, new N in Rh

There and Back, 2022
Becket
A1 In a ring, balance and spin to the right; gate clockwise on the side (fill the music!)
A2 In a ring, balance and spin to the left; gate anticlockwise on the side
B1 Chain across by the right (end slightly inside the set and look right); with the next, right shoulder 'round 1.5
B2 With your partner, balance and swing