Spring training has begun! Exhibition games galore for the next month, and I, the avid Red Sox fan, can only get my fill of the lads on YES Network and all the Yankee games I can stand! My guys (remember? the Red Sox?) have 31 almost straight days of exhibition games, and, as John Sterling sez, "they don't matter." So 0-30 or 30-0 in the pre-season, it all boils down to whether or not you win your first regular season game. That's all the fans care about anyway....and who's paying your salary? Well, says you, you are but I'm the one down here facing down that 90 mph fast ball comin' at me, so who's doin' the work, anyway?!
Well, as I was driving home from class this afternoon, I got thinking about playing for set dancers. It's kind of like playing the bigs during the regular season: doesn't matter how you play it, the dancers have got an opinion, and they're gonna let you know. Every dancer is different, but there's sort of two schools lately: old timers and old-style dancers will lift their feet off the floor maybe an inch or two at most, and do loads of shuffles, shifts and fancy footwork. They like the music at a nice swinging tempo so they can move through the figures smoothly with footwork intact. Newer-style dancers and contra converts will fly up high and do fast and loose, and expect the music to support that with less breathing room in the music and more speed overall. That means they have to wait less to put their next step down and lift their other foot up, so keep it moving already, willya?
I am not one to argue about dance speeds, because if you know me, you know that I have a governer installed, like a school bus. My speed is little-old-lady-going-to-church-on-Sunday-in-first-gear (ahhhh, slow session!). Drives my friends crazy. (I swear I'm working on it.) So realistically speaking, there's ceili speed, which is pretty lively already; and there's the speed you'd need to play to keep up with the high-flyers who put about a foot between them and the floor, and almost no footwork into their dancing. Try doing that for four hours! No, really...
So what's a girl to do? Do the best you can. After all, if you're the one up on stage, and you've got a groove going -- roll with it!
The other thing to remember is that playing Irish music is kind of like playing an exhibition game -- the score doesn't really matter. What matters is that you're having fun doing what you're doing! Come to think of it, Life is an exhibition game -- it's warm, it's sunny, you're doing something you love. So what if you botch the double play? Is anyone really gonna remember that once you start the next set of tunes?
Happy Spring Training,
The Trad
p.s. Old Songs Slow Session coming up in two weeks! We're gonna work on the set dance The Three Sea Captains, and we'll do a session standard: The Maid Behind the Bar. More advanced players, feel free to suggest a tune to follow it.
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