My wife and I regularly play for set dancing here in Cupertino, CA. Last time, we were asked to play the Sliabh Fraoch set, with flings for the last figure, and we were given a ‘part count’ for it. I forget how many parts it was.
Anyway, we played Green Grow the Rushes, O and Mrs Galvin’s, part of a set listed as flings on the Castle Ceili Band album. By my count, it should have worked out, but there were two problems.
One, the tunes have half-length parts, which I was sure was just a feature of flings because all of the handful I could think of have the same length parts. So we played Mrs Galvin’s like 5 times.
The bigger problem for me was that the dance caller wanted these at a tempo that seemed WAY too fast for flings, to me. It wasn’t double speed, and the tempo matched the dance, but it seemed all wrong for the tunes.
Anyone have any thoughts on this, or recommendations? We put a lot of effort into getting the tempo, pulse, tune type, etc right for the dancers, and this time I feel like we screwed up but I don’t know what we should have done instead.
list a fling at 114 bpm (a tick above the Irish reel 113 and the same speed as a strathspey) while a quick-time sword dance, which is sometimes referred to as a fling, can clock in at 122 bpm.
Maybe this is what your caller had in mind? If that’s the case, the wiki article makes it sound like a strathspey will do, and those can get quite lively.
Interesting, and thanks for the clarification. I had to laugh, though … the fling that kept running thru my head while reading your original note was “Love Will You Marry Me,” and there it was on the YouTube link! “Primrose Glen” is another one that rings a bell. Ah, I hear them going on to Jolly Beggarman, a reel, for the last chunk. Maybe that’s where the counts squared off. The only other thing I can think is that the caller was going back to the first-figure polkas, but
Well, that’s all I’ve got. Did you ask the caller?
That’s pretty much a lost cause, as he has a way of rattling on forever without actually answering the question. He was fine with what we did, FWIW, it just still seemed wrong to me.
well sometimes if there isn’t alot of hop in their step the dancers may ask for quicker tempo to overcompensate for their footwork or lackthereof, the perception that the quicker tempo wil liven up the dance.
in competition highland dancing the “fling” is danced to a strathspey. the sword dance is done beginning with a strathspey(Ghillie Callum) which abruptly changes to reel time at the “top of the dance”- very exciting! the flings and highlands of the irish tradition are related to these scottish tunes, but i would agree, they sound better a bit slower than a scottish strathspey…
