The Bay Area Country Dance Society Website

Saturday, October 3, 2020

Karen Axelrod’s ECD Musician workshop: “Playing for the Dancers” Saturday Oct 3, 1–2:15pm PT (4–5:15pm ET)

Register on Google Form: https://forms.gle/xK4j8BEgBNKLVMcS6

Payment $15-25 sliding scale: https://paypal.me/pools/c/8sreDoBdIB

Or email if you want to send a check. Claire@bacds.org BACDS area musicians can apply for BACDS scholarship, email Claire @bacds.org

Playing for the Dancers

English Country Dance tunes are beautiful. They are fun to play. There is so much variety in the repertoire, and so much we can do with the tunes. But we must never lose sight of the fact that we are playing for DANCING.

I will cover the many different ways that we help the dancers...how we start the tune, how we end the tune, tempo, phrasing, movement, figures. How do we make it easier for dancers to dance? (That’s a good thing) How do we make it harder for them to dance? (That’s a bad thing). How do we create “lift?” What information can we get from the dancers, just by watching them?

We will play music in this workshop, but we will also do a bit of dancing, to help us figure out what works and what doesn’t work.