duets

Duets are the next step up from the individual manoeuvre in building a dance. Here you can introduce various symmetries, which increases the beauty of a routine; and here you must begin to work with another paddler, which makes life both more challenging and rewarding. To be successful, both canoes in a duet figure must be aware of absolute position, each other’s position, and each other’s motion. Though it’s irrelevant to the concept of the invisible paddler, it is nice if the paddlers syncronize their strokes. This page shows some duet figures; string these together into a routine and, hey-presto, a two-canoe dance.

If the boats are travelling they can be beside each other (in a rank) or one behind the other (in a file) or they can display some other symmetry. If they are simply pivoting, they can parallel each others' rotation or reflect it; they can overlap each other’s space or they can interlock. If they are both travelling and pivoting, the possibilities increase exponentially.

See also the pages of trios and quartets, do-si-dos, group pivots, files and ranks.

These figures represent generic types rather than specific instances. Though they make excellent studies for practising your paddling, the real interest lies in what you can do by varying and connecting these and other formations in a dance.

Ratings: simple (for a competent style paddler) ; challenging ; really hard

Click any figure to see an animation.

a duet can be based on two boats in a file

or two boats in a rank