Калан и Манул [The Sea Otter & the Pallas Cat]

Калан и Манул (The Sea Otter & The Pallas Cat) (R8x32) 3C (4C set) E McIntosh

Tune: Sandy's Bounty played AABB [sample of once through provided]

1-8 1s set [2], 1М (cat) casts to 2nd pl and dances across [3], 1К (otter) following (2s step up on b4-5), 1s turn LH [3] ending on opp sides, М facing up, К down.

9-16 Mammals’ Chain: 1М with 2s dance ladies' chain with 1M+2М in leading role WHILE 1К with 3s dance ladies' chain with 1К+2К in leading role.

This figure is like a ladies' chain up and down the dance. At the top, 1М+2М turn RH about ¾ while 2К dances across, while at the bottom the *otters* turn RH while 3М dances across. Go!

All meet someone [of the opposite role; not your partner. 2К+1M, 2M+3К, 1К+3M] coming towards you: half turn them LH

Then the same people as before change back right hand or dance across again.

You end with everyone turning partner left hand.

17-24 M up, К down, half fig 8. 213. All half RSh reel of 3 on own side. 1s naturally end facing in, 3К & 2M naturally end facing out, 3M & 2К finish their loop to face in. 312

25-32 1s RH birl WHILE supporting couples chase CW half way and RH birl. All end with a LF skip-change out to sidelines 213 on bar 32, looking like you meant to do it : p.

Repeat, having passed a couple. Only the 1s are moving at the start, so previous 1s can slip to the bottom on b1-2 as new 1s start.

I enclose an abc file of my arrangement, and a sample of me playing the tune (electronically adjusted to 112 bpm, with the closest approximation to the chords I worked out that my wee 8-bass BC melodeon could manage), but only once through, as I only managed one lot of A&B in my recording session without any horrible errors…

One week at the Leominster dance group we were walking through Nicola Scott's dance A Trip to Applecross. It's a 2C dance in a 3C set and has a Men's Chain up and down the dance the first time and a Ladies' Chain the second time for each dancing couple. There is occasionally a disadvantage to be ambidanceterous (thank you Ambidance Boston for this word!) - I was in the middle of a 3C set having just turned LH, so when Brian said "Ladies' Chain up and down", it took me a few seconds to realise I wasn't meant to be changing RH with top man… But it's totally possible for 1M and the 2s at the top to do a role-swapped Ladies' Chain (NOT a Men's Chain - that has the leading people changing LH and turning the opposite person RH - the mirror image of the path of a Ladies' Chain) while 1L does her chain with the 3s - only it's 2M and 3L who meet for the left hand turn in the middle. When I was at The Paddocks dance holiday, Kenneth 'Library of Birmingham' Reid challenged me to work up my new figure into a full dance. I decided that what I had come up with should be about my meeting my now wife. We have sometimes swapped sides in Catch the Wind, so my dance begins with the 1s setting and 1L chasing 1M round behind 2M.

My wife's character in her local pagan reënactment group in is a deer god. The symbol of Clan McIntosh is a wildcat ('Touch not the cat bot a glove'). A dance about us could be about the animals associated with us. But I don't think a wildcat and a deer would really be friends, so I turned to the animal that is her Skype avatar, a sea otter (importantly, not a polar bear). The sea otter is also a carnivore, and lives in a different place from a mountain cat, so they can't possibly be in conflict. I looked up Russian cat varieties, so the dance could have a name in Russian and found the Pallas Cat - it's so fluffy and does such an expressive grumpy face - I had to be one!

There isn't really a concise way of describing the 3C chain figure, so I declare it to have a cutesy animal name like the Dolphin Reels in Pelorus Jack - the Mammals' Chain (maybe the mirror image LH one is a Lizards' Chain?).

I am generally in favour of gender-free dancing (anyone can ask anyone to dance and can dance on either side) and have the badge to prove it (thanks Bob!), but am still in the habit of using Man and Lady when I call - it's the terminology MiniCrib uses, and MiniCrib is the language I think of dances in [of course if I am on the ladies' side, I will curtsy - it goes with the place, not the person (similarly I try to dress my dem sets in e.g. kilts (or tartan skirts if a female gentleman didn't feel comfortable in a real kilt) on one side, dark skirt plus sash on the other (and I have a black utility kilt if a male lady wasn't comfortable wearing a skirt {I didn't end up dancing in a Ladies' Step dem at Summer School, even though I could have matched the dress code of black skirt-ish and white top}), and will do so if I started in a Drewry Set (3s+4s improper) as 3M or 4M and the band fail to provide me with two chords at the end as well as the start - clearly I have taken my partner's place]. I'm experimenting with non-gendered calling (and the way I think about dances tends to be anyway e.g. '1s go to their right' vs. 'man down, lady up'), and will probably end up with Larks and Ravens (think Left and Right, as well as one vs. two syllables, as per gent/man and lady), as this seems to be the most common in the UK [as used at IVFDF 2018 in Sheffield, which was run entirely gender-free] (Elms and Maples suffers from my reading them as L and M, but the wrong way round; apparently some people object to Jets and Rubies as being too obviously gendered because they think of the aeroplane not the stone; lead and follow don't describe the roles very well in country dancing - there are many times when the lady is leading the figure e.g. ladies' chain begins with ladies changing RH). This dance allows me to propose my own alternative: Cats and Otters!