jack

 

Yay, dancing!

I went to the round, and danced with many nice people. The dance in the middle I joined in with the girl's part, and it's been ages since I've danced a non-symmetric dance the wrong way round, but apparently at some point in my patchy dancing career my body learnt to follow.

This did have "being led round in promenade" and "doing that elegent thing where you take both hands and go round someone under their arms spinning in such a way that neither of you break your wrists" and all the guys led them well, and I've got practiced enough at taking physical cues in country dancing that it all just worked.

Leading and following is much less demarked in round than in ballroom, because there's no choice about where to go next, just sometimes about which sort of step to use, and because women at least often dance as either, but people definitely led me more than they do when I'm a man :)

There also was a round-waltz in one of the dances, which I've muddled up before due to clash of round/ballroom signals, but went perfectly smoothly when I worked out to trust my feet to go lefrightleft rightleftright to the music, my brain to steer, and my partner to indicate which way we were supposed to rotate and how far :) (Thanks!)

[1] "I danced with a man who danced with a girl who danced with the Prince of Wales," is a line from an old song, apparently 1920s, so I've no idea why it's a meme in my head except that my parents say it. I think I danced with a girl who *did* this, kinda.

Whew! Last week I didn't go out much, but seem to have expended 130% of my available energy reading through my new amazon order and writing fic. So I've been doing quite well at work, but just slightly sleepwalking the whole time.

On tuesday was CTS good and evil discussion, which sparked the slight philosophical turn since.

On friday was Ceb's pancake party. Yay, pancakes! Yay, hugs! Yay, apples to apples!

On saturday I went to poohsoc and bullied there into being an AGM next weekend, with most of a committee.

And IVFDF. I didn't make it to any of the events, but got to the ceilidh at the end. It started a bit slow as everyone seemed too tired or shy to want to dance, or Owen (hi! Nice to see you in person), but then many people I knew turned up or stopped being stewards, and it was fun and exhausting. On my way out I stopped at a weird ceilidh/rap cross thing which was very hoppy and had actual upper body expression (thanks, Rosy) :)

I meandered fatiguedly across tiny dark east cambridge residential streets to try to cut back home via the railway cycle bridge, and collapsed on the sofa in an unheralded funk. Reading most of a diane duane young adult young wizard book pulled me through.

On sunday, it was sunny going out, so I was happy. I did a spot of shopping, and got to the *other* ceilidh. There was almost no-one I knew dancing, but I think I cadged someone nice for every dance. And all went well, with only a bit of "agh, turn round in -0.13 steps", until the final waltz, when my ballroom waltz just didn't fit (sorry, Alison).

Thanks to Sally and everyone else who organised it. Congratulations!

Ooh, that was fun. It was exhausting, but a great ceilidh. There's just the right number of people I know, so I didn't need too much running round trying to dance with all of them, nor forced to make a new friend every dance. And I wasn't worrying about anything else, so just threw myself into the dancing.

It seemed to just click -- it wasn't absolutely perfect, but I did all of the dances well, didn't start daydreaming, and coped with a few advanced twiddles; and even polka'd Sonicdrift avoiding everyone and without tripping on anything.

I can never remember the names of the dances. There was one in lines of pairs of pairs where you turn opposite, turn person-of-the-same-gender, chain, spin partner, turn opposite, turn partner, circle, and pass through, but I was dancing with Rosy who *really* can spin, and the entire dance seemed to circle the same way, so by the end I looked shell shocked, and my middle ear was complaining.

And OXO, with a horseshoe line that's threaded through an arch on the end, that we tried to do about 3 times as often as their was time for. It's called OXO because six pairs form two circles and a rh star, but made me think "You must be able to play O's and X's like this..."

Atreic was a good caller. I'm slightly biased because I know more dances now that I used to, but she was pleasant to listen to, and I always knew how to dance after she explained it, which put her, together with a couple of others, as a favorite caller.

We resolve: we must do more dancing. I could maybe go to the round, but I maybe should investigate the other groups that build something. And try to get a group of people together to go back to the CDC balls -- I miss waltzing.

OK, for the record, a brief summary of may week.

Friday

CDC Ball. I nearly didn't go, I've forgotten lots of fun dances (even foxtrot, vienese and samba), but it turned out well. At first there were few people I knew and I hovered rather, but then I met several old friends from dancing, including a few people from Trinity I'd forgotten ever did dance. And atreic arrived, and we spent ages chatting, and she gave me a lift back. The dancesport team were very shiny.

Saturday

Playford ball. As tangoing at CDC is to James Bond or Harry Tasker, so Playford is to Firefly! Well, not quite. But it's all old-fasioned much smouldering stares no touching circling each other with occasional swinging and complicated progressions stuff.

For anyone who doesn't know, it's organised by the Round, the country dancing society, who do regular (and great!) ceilidhs.

I was a bit worried not having practiced before, but it mostly went ok. And people were happy to help, though sometimes that was more transitive than others: one old gentleman was absolutely brilliant, giving a little nudge in the right direction whenever we hesitated, but never seeming patronising or even to notice; another couple were helpful, but rather overbearing, and made us feel we shouldn't have been trying if we couldn't do it right first time, and called advice which was perhaps more helpful to someone who knew what all the words mean.

It reminds me of playing dominos against dad in the pub; when I'd been hesitating one of the spectators would say "You could play that one," I can't tell if he means "That's a valid domino and I don't know why you haven't seen it" or "there's a 50/50 chance he has the double six, so don't play that one, but if you play this, he can only score two points from these dominos, and you have a counter to those ones, so your expected return is ok" which is what the cider is busily muzzing me to see, and I don't want to ASK becasue then that tells dad what I have.

In other musings, food was nice. And we talked a lot about education. And Naath asked me to dance with a very gracious "Jack! Here! Now!" :) And how does the room always go quiet just before you say 'moosefuckers'? *After* makes sense, but before? That's non-causal!

Oh, and I went to some CULES sketches in the afternoon, with several people I knew in. They were good, though, while I'm very fond of "Let's self-deprecatingly announce this is a bad play and then say some innuendo" humour, it was possibly overdone. But they all had some classic lines, and it's lovely and relaxing to sit and watch for once.