Check out Gym Class Gayed Up By Square Dancing. The big joke is that square dancing is gay. Sample quote:
“Do people even square dance anymore?” said Dan Wilkinson
, a senior. “None that I know of. I’m starting to believe some of those right wingers who think the government wants to make all of us gay, because nothing is gayer than school-mandated square dancing.”
Sigh….
Interesting blog entry from a 25-year-old guy who has taken up square dancing in Western Pennsylvania: Karate and Whatnot from PA: Square Dancing anew.
We have our practices every Wednesday, and by the time spring rolls around I should be ready for Plus level square dancing. That’s the standard level for professional square dancing. One of the other dancers told me about an Irish Step dancer that considered the group to be snobs because they required everyone to go to several months of practices before they were officially allowed into the dances our group, but I would beg to say that it’s absolutely necessary to have at least a couple months of practices like this before joining the larger groups and dances.
Note: they don’t have lessons; they “practice”. Plus is “professional” square dancing.
Sure, sure. The stereotype is of white-haired, old people who really shouldn’t be showing their legs, dancing around in short skirts and petticoats. Actually, it’s not hugely off, but there are a lot more young people than I would have thought….I think the biggest reason that most of the people are older, is that retired people are the only ones with the time available to do all the dancing!!
Is he having fun? You betcha!
It makes a great activity where I’m making some new friends and acquaintences and stretching my world beyond home, work, and karate. Definitely a lot of fun! Ah
, actually it’s a great, big lot of fun!
I’ve been using del.icio.us to keep track of bookmarks. It’s social; others can see what you’re bookmarking, and even subscribe to your bookmarks. Every page has an RSS feed, so you can see what others are bookmarking in your RSS reader. So if you all would sign up for a del.icio.us account, and we agreed on a square dance tag (no spaces in tags, as far as I can see), we could keep up with what’s going on in square dancing. What a concept!
BTW
, my bookmarks are here: del.icio.us/krisjensen: they’re currently mostly related to self-improvement.
It’s been a while since I’ve blogged anything, but it’s not that I haven’t been square dancing. In mid-September, we went to Oregon
, where Anne and I called a women’s weekend at the Silver Falls Conference Center. It rained most of the weekend (what else is new for Oregon?), which gave me a chance to play some bridge instead of hiking to various waterfalls.
After the weekend, we spent Sunday night in Eugene, where I called for the Eugene Spin Cycle Squares, a new gay square dancing group. They’ve got a good-sized class going (at least a square of new dancers…would that the Wilde Bunch could have a class that large), using Paul Waters’ tapes, with Paul’s somewhat idiosyncratic teaching order. This teach order bit me when I called “dosado” without even thinking about it (doesn’t everybody teach dosado the first night?), and the students all looked at me blankly.
Then down to Mom’s ranch for a few days (a little Mexican Train with my 103-year-old grandmother), and back to Eugene for the Saturday night contra dance, with Woody Lane calling. This was a good thing, as I got a chance to chat with Woody a little bit about the Corvallis contra dance group, for whom I’m calling a dance in November with the fabulous Amazon Creek dance band.
Back to Albuquerque in time to do laundry and head out to Lake Tahoe for the A&C weekend, Tahoe Mirror Touch of Class. Caught a little C3A floor time, and enjoyed the beautiful Lake Tahoe view…topping it all off with a cruise on the lake.
Back to Albuquerque in time to do laundry and get ready for guests for the Wilde Bunch’s fly-in. We hosted Jerry Jestin and Kathy and Marie from San Francisco. The fly-in was small but fun, and everyone seemed to have a good time.
The following weekend, I called a contra dance in Albuuqerque for FolkMADS. It went well, I think.
So much for what I’ve been up to. In the next couple of entries, I’ll get back to blogging with some square/contra related links.
Last night was the Second Sunday Contra and English Country Dance (for experienced dancers). The band was Cypher and the callers were Noralyn Parsons, Larry Daughenbaugh and me.
I’d asked Larry what dances he planned to do so I could work out a tentative program and choose my dances to avoid duplication. He was tentative on Chorus Jig, because it would depend on whether the band could do it. It turned out that the band could do it…if they brought the music, but they didn’t so he didn’t. I’d worked out two programs based on the Chorus Jig question. That was because a dance that I wanted to do (Hats off to Larry, by Penn Fix…I admit it, I wanted to do it because of the name…) is heavily asymmetric with a complicated figure (double figure eight), as is Chorus Jig (contra corners).
So I’ve been looking for a way to keep dances in my online database (an expanded, customized version of the Filemaker database available at American Country Dances On Line, and have them with me when I call. So far, I’m uncomfortable with using my Tungsten T3, although I have the database there, and it’s great if I need to quickly find some other dance. I’ve tried using the save as HTML option and then printing the resulting the webpage. Looks great, but a little cumbersome at the dance. So I worked up a print option that results in a double page spread that I can print up in a folded over, stapled booklet, custom made for each dance. An inside spread page looks like this:
On the front page
, I put info about the dance, including the tentative program. Inside are all the dances I might do, in the order I might do them. The dance is on the left hand page, the notes and comments are on the right.
At the dance, I discovered some additional benefits (other than being fairly compact and easy to read and handle). I could write notes for announcements on the back page. I could add notes at the dance, ready to be transferred into the database later. And a disadvantage: the other callers now know fer sure what a total nerd I am. Oh well.
At 7 pm, the scheduled start time, we had 8 people. I hadn’t planned on doing a square, but that seemed the most appropriate thing to do in that situation, so I did a MWSD-type ad hoc square featuring Star Thru. Before I started, I taught Star Thru by having the heads step in and face their corner (Pair Off in MWSD terms). I then did several Star Thrus, until it looked like they could do it relatively reflexively. Imagine my surprise when I called Heads Star Thru during the dance, and the dancers paired off before doing a star thru with the sides. Hmmm…. Then I had them in facing lines, and I said Ladies Chain (expecting two ladies chain across) and all 4 ladies chained, as in a square. I have to work really hard to get MWSD dancers to do that move from facing lines! So it was a learning process; I had to learn how to change my calls to get the dancers to do what I wanted. So I called until enough people wandered in to form a reasonable contra line and then quit. The people who were there on time got the reward (punishment?) of the square.
The rest of the dance went according to my (non-Chorus Jig) plan, although the last dance turned out to be different than I thought (my database had a dance called Gypsy Star by Adam Carlson, but Larry used a dance called Gypsy Star by Cary Ravitz). I think it was a fun dance…at least I had fun; it’s nice to work with other callers so one has a chance to dance as well as call.
In other contra news, my contra calling mentor, Merri Rudd, has a new website: merridancing.com. I’m sorry I’m going to miss her 50th birthday party next week at the FolkMADS dance, but maybe I’ll catch up with her at Boo Camp (PDF) or the Fire Ant Frolic
My friend Allan Hurst (if you haven’t checked out his Square Dance Article Archive, you should) is now blogging over on LiveJournal. As expected, his journaling is witty and fun, although it’s disconcerting to find oneself mentioned (I’m supposed to be the observer, not the observed…).
At any rate, here’s a fun entry describing a conversation with a couple of well-known callers about calling at conventions and the trials and tribulations thereof…in particular, how to get a bathroom break: allanh: Grumble, mutter,
In Chicago, Allan told me he’d started a blog, but didn’t give me the URL; if you read his first entry, you can see he’s a little ambivalent about blogging. Too bad, Allan. Your journal popped up on my RSS feed of LiveJournal entries that mention square and/or contra dancing,
I may have to start a LiveJournal blog just so I can occasionally comment on Allan’s posts; he only allows comments from LiveJournal friends. Another square dance friend
, David Levine, keeps a LiveJournal blog that’s a mirror of his Novel Journal. I suppose I could mirror SquareZ on LiveJournal…might lead to a whole new audience.
Here’s a website with a Quicktime video of square dancing (the singing call used is the Battle Hymn of the Republic):
Zmetro.com: Farmer’s Market: Westport Squares Video Clip
What’s interesting (and fun to watch) is that the square of dancers includes a woman in a motorized wheelchair. And boy can she move!
Whoosh…gone!
You’d think the 53rd NSDC organizers would keep the site up for a few months…people might want to go back and check something…or maybe the organizers could put up a page for comments…or something.
But, no. While the 53rd National Square Dance Convention is still listed as the owner of 53nsdc.com
, the URL itself goes to a page titled “Welcome to Microsoft® Windows NT® 4.0 Option Pack.” Huh?
John Perry Barlow organized sporadic dancing around New York City during the RNC. Here’s his report on the first day: BarlowFriendz: Dancarchy Reigns! A quote:
We just had another brilliant expedition into elephant country. We encountered many of our quarry
, converted a few, and made the rest so nervous you would have thought their thin smiles might shatter their faces. One of them said that he knew we were mocking George Bush. “How are we doing that?” we asked. “By dancing,” he snarled.
Another quote from a participant:
My favorite reported quote came from the Bush supporter who called one of our ACLU-member dancers a “free-speech Nazi.” Now really, where does parody go from there?
‘Tis the season for college orientations, many of which have a square dancing evening. I didn’t know colleges still did that (it was my first exposure to square dancing, back at Pomona College in 1966…didn’t take then), but according to various Live Journal entries, it’s still alive and well.
At any rate, here are some very scary pictures of one such event: girlziplocked: Square Dancing: I document your humilation. Amazing what a weird camera can do…