[SCA-Dance] Contrapasso video

[Mary Railing]

Please don't worry about *me* getting upset.  I'm not someone who becomes unduly disturbed by honest criticism.  I'd rather be told what went wrong by someone whose opinion I respect than be praised by someone who is just trying to spare my feelings.  I've already explained to Mistress Huette why these dancers simply aren't going to come up to professional standards.  I settled for something "good enough" for SCA purposes, but that doesn't mean it couldn't ideally be a lot better.  Specific points, like remembering to keep one's hands low, are things we can work on.

I'm sorry you had such a bad experience with your attempt to create dance videos.  I've seen something similar happen with a musical performance friends recorded, but were not able to use due to objections by someone.  Tom Peters, the business consultant/author, once said that "anything worth doing is worth doing badly."  What he meant is that if a thing really needs to be done, it's better to do it less than perfectly than to not do it at all because you can't to do it perfectly.  I've talked for years about doing dance instruction videos without trying it. Now, thanks to Eadric Hameresmithe's questions on this list, I've finally gotten around to it.  I'm learning as I go. Hopefully future ones will be better.

--Urraca



________________________________
From: Renee Wendy Hollomon <goddess at oort.com>
To: sca-dance at sca-dance.org
Sent: Saturday, June 13, 2009 3:53:00 PM
Subject: Re: [SCA-Dance] Contrapasso video

As a person who tried desperately to stage and film instructional 
SCA dance videos, as a person who found it extremely difficult to 
learn to dance and would have found such videos as valuable as 
diamonds, as a person who was completely unable to get agreement 
on the project due to a few influential perfectionists...

As a person who shed tears over being frustrated in her goals...

I congratulate anyone *else* who succeeded, and know that even 
a video with some errors will be EXTREMELY valuable to students 
and teachers in other shires.

I remember with regret the dance teacher who came to me with 
tears in her eyes at Pennsic, begging to use my videos, but I had 
to say no, due to certain filmed individuals who saw any tempo 
problems, any minor imperfections, as a scourge that must be 
avoided, despite the emormous benefit of SCA dance film videos.

Please treat this project with kindness, and do not squelch the 
aspirations of the well-intentioned volunteer.

Renee de Cataluna

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Religion: A large popular cult
Cult: A small unpopular religion

On Mon, Jun 08, 2009, Huette von Ahrens declaimed:
> 
> I find it very interesting and well thought out as a teaching video.  However, the dancers are still very unsure of what they are dancing and keeping in tempo.  Not all the time, but every once in a while it shows up.
> My opinion is that the dancers need to practice this dance much much more until they can do it in their sleep and not have to think about what comes next.  When you reshoot this video, and I hope that you will, the dancers need to appear confident about what they are doing and the dance should look seamless.  Remember that as a dance instruction video, people are going to be watching this and then duplicating what they see.  If they see things that are wrong then they are going to duplicate that.
> 
> A comment was placed on YouTube that the reverenza was done wrong.  I think that the woman eventually started doing the reverenza correctly, but the man did it consistantly wrong.  I also disliked his style in the chase section [where he goes forward and she backward.]  He also looks very awkward in doing the zigzags
> 
> Also when they are dancing side by side their hand position is wrong, wrong, wrong!  He is leading his horse, not dancing with his lady.  Their hand position should be totally down by their sides.
> 
> I like that the dancers are in clothes that show off their movement.  I like that at the end you show the dance in its entirety.  It would be an added bonus if you then showed the dance again with the dancers in garb appropriate to the era of the dance.  This will show off the beauty of the dance as was seen during SCA period.
> 
> I have been waffling back and forth if any commentary and instruction should be given about the nuances of the dance that were not given here.  That, of course, might scare off any beginners because that adds complications.  But perhaps if you do shoot the dance in garb, perhaps the dancers could add the nuances then to show that such was done.  It is a thought, but I am not entirely certain that this should be added.  
> 
> I hope that my comments and opinions are taken in the spirit that they were given, to be helpful and give you insights from someone not emotionally involved with the project.  
> 
> If you need any explanation about what I have suggested here, I am more that willing to help you as much as I can.
> 
> Yours, in service,
> 
> Mistress Huette
> 
> Barony of the Angels, Kingdom of Caid.
> 
> 
> --- On Sat, 6/6/09, Mary Railing <mrailing2 at yahoo.com> wrote:
> 
> > From: Mary Railing <mrailing2 at yahoo.com>
> > Subject: [SCA-Dance] Contrapasso video
> > To: mynyddseren at yahoogroups.com
> > Cc: sca-dance at sca-dance.org
> > Date: Saturday, June 6, 2009, 8:30 PM
> > I've put a video of instructions for
> > dancing "Contrapasso in Due" on YouTube.
> > http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MmDLK8GYZD4
> > 
> > Any comments or suggestions would be appreciated.
> > 
> > --Urraca
> > 
> > 
> > 
> > ? ? ? 
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> 
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