Moonstruck Marrow
Tune: Moonstruck Marrow, by George Martin Fell Brown
Set: 8 dancers; 29“ (medium) sticks; skipping (single steps)
Source: Red Herring / George Martin Fell Brown (2009)
Chorus: 1. Outside four go 1/4 of the way around CCW while middle four go 3/4 around CW; all clash. (Set is now rotated 90°.) 2. Top & bottom sets of four each go half-way around CCW; all clash. Repeat steps 1 & 2 three more times.
Figures: dance on/grand right & left, linear bombast (for 8), (slow) spaghetti junction, zipper hey & off
Detailed Description
This dance was written in 2009 by George Martin Fell Brown.
Chorus
The chorus is danced to the “B” music, which is 16 bars long (32 beats; twice as long as most of our dances). The line of dancers goes through four 90º rotations.
Bars 1-2: the four dancers at the ends of the set move 90º counter-clockwise while the four dancers in the middle move three places clockwise. All dancers clash with their partners on the last beat of bar 2. The line should now be across instead of up-and-down (perpendicular to the line the dancers started from).
Bars 3-4: The two sets of four dancers at each end of the new line move two places counter-clockwise. All dancers clash with their partners on the last beat of bar 4. Dancers who started on the ends are now part of the group of four in the middle, and dancers who started in the middle are now on the ends.
Bars 5-16: Repeat the sequence from bars 1-4 three more times. (“Places, not faces.”) Each time, the set rotates 90º, and the dancers end up switched from the outside to inside group or vice-versa.
Note that there is not a clash at the beginning of each group of 4 bars.
Figures
The figures happen to the “A” music, which is 16 bars long (32 beats; twice as long as most of our dances).
Dance On: Grand Right & Left
Dancers start in two lines facing up.
⇐⇐ ⇐⇐ 1 4 8 5
Music ⇓⇑
⇐⇐ ⇐⇐ 2 3 7 6
Dancers 1 & 2 move toward music and cross (passing right shoulders). When dancers 3 & 4 reach the same spot, they cross passing left shoulders. Continue in a grand right & left (twice around), ending up in home positions:
2 4 6 8
Music
1 3 5 7
(If dancers arrive home before the end of the music, twirl/spin in place.)
Linear Bombast for 8
The general pattern is “round 360º, pass one, meet one”.
To start, dancers 1 & 8 move to the end positions. (They do not participate in the first “round 360º” move.) All other dancers pass their diagonal by the right shoulders and go around 360º. (Dancers who started on the master side will end facing up; dancers who started on the apprentice side will end facing down.)
Pass one person completely and move just past shoulder-to-shoulder with the second person and dance 360º around each other. (When you reach the end of the set, you wait for the current group to do the move and come in on the next “pass one, meet one”.)
Repeat this pattern a total of 8 times, ending in your home position.
(Slow) Spaghetti Junction
Bars 1-4: Dancers 1 & 8 cast outwards (#1 and the master side heading up, #8 and the apprentice side heading down), curve around 270º (3/4 of a circle) and across, clashing on the last beat of bar 4. (The set is now perpendicular to the music.)
Bars 5-16: Repeat this sequence 3 more times, ending up back in home positions.
Zipper Hey & Off
Beats 1-2: all dancers move into a single line with #1 facing down and all other dancers facing up.
Beats 3-16: Dancer #1 continues dancing more or less straight down the set. Dancer #2 continues, passing right shoulders with #1. All other dancers remain still until #1 approaches. As #1 approaches each dancer, the dancer starts dancing and veers off in the opposite direction from the previous dancer (passing #1 by the opposite shoulder from the previous dancer). Dancers continue through a linear hey until the set is inverted. I.e., dancer #1 stops at the bottom and turns to face up. Dancer #2 stops when facing #1. Each other dancers stops when they reach the back of a dancer facing away from them. The last dancer should stop on beat #16 (bar #8).
Beats 17-32 (bars 9-16): Repeat the above process except that #1 continues dancing off and the rest of the set follow.
Tune
- dances:border:1_moonstruck_marrow.abc
- dances:border:1_moonstruck_marrow.mid
- dances:border:1_moonstruck_marrow.pdf
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