Summer priorities - TowerRavensTeam

10 Jun 2014

Hi all,

Sorry this is a long email, you can skip to the numbered bit if you're short on time!

At the EGM we identified 3 priorities for the next few months - teach everyone the
'perfections' for the Julibee dance, get everyone doing different positions in the
Jubilee dance, create a funky new dance. We've started on all of these but it's
difficult to split our time evenly between these three things because we've only got 2
hours a week (less if we need to spend so much time on the sign up sheet, ahem) plus I
never know who's going to be there until we start practising!

In addition, we discussed last night how it's embarrassing not having a second dance
at festivals. This is why we created the circle dance last summer but that's fallen by
the wayside in favour of creating a funkier, more difficult round dance. We've got
some interesting ideas for the new dance but realistically it won't be ready to dance
out until the end of the summer - maybe Rockingham could be a target date? 

Jo is going to ask Ru at Camden clog whether she'd be able to come and teach some of
us a clog dance, just so we have something extra for festival dance spots, but I think
that's a long-term project too! We could therefore look at changing our summer
priorities to learning a new second dance which is easier than the funky one we're
creating. Options are 1) revive last year's circle dance - it will probably come
flooding back to those who did it at Tenterden 2) create a new dance - probably a chorus
dance with 5 simple figures inbetween 3) learn a trad dance. Beadnell is by far the
easiest - I reckon we could learn it by Leigh if the same 5 people turned up both of the
next weeks. Swalwell is also quite simple and is done at a laid back speed so a good
contrast to the Jubilee dance. Thrales do Beadnell and Sallyport do Swalwell so we might
look like we're copying, but I don't think we'll overlap at any bookings this
summer. Or we could look at one of the trad dances that no other team does at the moment
which would be good if we've got one eye on the trad competition      at DERT, however
would definitely take longer to learn as there will be no videos to learn from! 

So could I ask you all to have a think about what you feel we should spend the next 3-4
months concentrating on? Here are the options including how many weeks I think it would
take us to complete these tasks if we only worked on that task:

1) Perfecting Jubilee - I think we got to about pixies, so there's half the dance to
go = 3-5 weeks. 
2) Learning new Jubilee positions - according to the positions sheet there are 11 people
who aren't yet dance-out-ready in their secondary position. I don't think we need
to prioritise getting everyone sorted straight away. If we aimed to get 5 people confident
in new positions that would take 3-5 weeks. 
3) Creating the new funky dance. Approx 3 weeks to finish writing, 3 weeks to teach to
everyone and 2 weeks to polish = 8 weeks
4) Learn an extra, simple-ish dance. Beadnell/old circle dance would take 2-4 weeks,
Swalwell maybe 4-5 weeks. 

In addition to these options we need to go over the procession stuff with Nic and Janet
before Leigh. People have also requested that we do a session on dancing in small spaces,
which I'll try and schedule in some time before the July crawl.

So... if you've got to this point in the email, please can you help me to plan the
next 12-16 weeks by sending me your thoughts on which two things from the list of four you
think we should prioritise? It doesn't need to be an essay like this has been, just 2
bullet points will suffice! Please send me your thoughts by FRIDAY if posssible so I can
create a summer plan over the weekend. 

Thanks very much, 

Ffion x

Please take a look at my blog on Welsh folk songs - caneuongwerin.wordpress.com