Lots of Updates: 3) Square Dancing

[cjsmith]

(No, I'm not dancing.)

There was a dance in our area this weekend. We got to host a couple from Los Angeles; we'd stayed with them multiple times and it was nice to be able to extend our hospitality to them in turn. One slight change in routine is that they are Major Sit-Down Breakfast Eaters while we are Grab-The-Protein-Bar-That's-In-Your-Flight-Bag Eaters. Either the scrambled egg breakfast I faked up Saturday morning was okay or they were gracious enough to pretend it was. I will never know.

When they came home from the Friday night session I heard that the dance hall was awful. They said it was shaped like a pie wedge, with the caller at the point, and all the squares were dancing thirty degrees off from their neighbors. Apparently this is very disorienting. After my flight lesson Saturday, the timing worked out so that I could meet a group for lunch. Again the conversation turned to the difficulty of the material being called and the confusion of the dance hall itself. I decided I had to go see this hall.

It's rectangular enough. The problem is that the stage is in one corner and the carpet reinforces that effect with radial stripes originating there. They'd set the caller up in the "obvious" spot, in the corner. I had to admit it was very odd to watch the dancing, skewed that way!

I felt very welcomed when I dropped in. People from all over -- Canada, Japan, Florida -- came up to me and said hi.

I have to admit that if I could have one thing back, one capability my feet used to have, I'd be very hard pressed to decide between running and square dancing. Swimming is such an inefficient use of time that I'd love to be able to run for exercise, but square dancing was a huge part of my life! If given the choice on Saturday, I would have chosen square dancing, no question. Away from the fun and the social atmosphere I'd probably still choose square dancing. Maybe someday. I sure do like the people.

Comments

[ladycelia.livejournal.com]

The style of squaredancing that I grew up with actually involved dancing--not walking. Think more along the lines of traditional contra-dances. The moves are the same, but the say you move your body is higher tempo (if that makes any sense). There's a certain bounciness to it.

[cjsmith.livejournal.com]

Traditional contra dances (the very few I've been to) seem to me to be a lot like square dancing, so maybe I'm just color blind in that range. Or maybe I (used to) walk very bouncily anyway!

[ladycelia.livejournal.com]

Think 'skipping' vs. 'walking'. That's probably the closest approximation that I can come up with.

[cjsmith.livejournal.com]

Ah. Yeah, I don't tend to think of either skipping or walking as "dancing". I guess that's the ballroom training coming out. (Square dancing is about as unlike "dancing" as it's possible to be, I'd think, and still be moving.) "Modern Western Square Dancing" square dancers are trained to shuffle, which isn't much like dancing either although we pretend it's to the beat. :)

[ladycelia.livejournal.com]

Okay--so you understand what I'm trying to say here---yeah, walking (or shuffling) isn't dancing. Skipping isn't either, but it's almost a bit closer--when I was a kid and we squaredanced, we danced! And it was fun that way.

[cjsmith.livejournal.com]

Gee, sorry we don't do it the right way. ;-)