quasigeostrophy | Jul. 20th, 2003

medusas_secret arrived around 5pm Friday evening. We headed to Whitestown for the first evening of the dance weekend (about 1/2 hour west of home, on the NW side of Indy). We were casually enjoying the potluck dinner and socializing at 7:30 when we noticed the beginner's contra dance workshop starting, so we joined the line to help out. At 8pm the night's main session started - contras, squares, and waltzes. I never stopped until almost at the break at 11:15 or so when that session ended. They had a late night swing dance session afterward, but I was too tired and not confident in my swing dancing, so we headed home.

Yesterday, workshops started at Noon - we took the beginning waltz, honing squares skills, and beginning swing workshops - back to back to back. Waltz was excellent - I now feel very comfortable staying on the floor for those. The squares workshop was meh - it was in the ballet room upstairs rather than the large gym, and there was a horrible echo making it difficult to hear the leader. Also, she really didn't do anything new. We did try a "bear square" at the end - 7 people instead of 8, and you have to keep a teddy bear in its correct place. The swing workshop was pretty good, too.

computerchix and I tried to take a swing dance class several years ago, and I felt like it was somewhat rigid. I feel more comfortable at swing now, because some of the things I felt were natural but "wrong" in the earlier class are actually fine (such as taking an extra 2 beats outside the 6 count step to do something now and then).

medusas_secret and I came home around 4pm after the workshops, and we vegged for a while. I showed her a few episodes of Coupling on DVD. We went back to the dance site in time for the 8pm event - 3+ more hours of contras and squares. Again I don't think I sat out until the last square before they had ice cream at the end of the session. I probably could have stayed for late night swing from an ability standpoint, but I was beat. Besides,

medusas_secret found out she had to be back home (a 4 hour drive) by 11am this morning, so we called it a night, getting to bed around 1am.

Overall, the dance weekend was well done. Callers were all good, the food and other logistics were decent. I met some folks I'd seen at the Champaign, IL and St. Louis dances as well. The band was the crown jewel of the weekend, though. Hotpoint String Band absolutely rocked. I have never been carried through fairly sophisticated contras with the caller stopping so early in the call (last night the caller did a couple of contras without even a walkthrough before the music started) and gotten the feel just from the band's playing. I really felt like I was dancing and not just walking the floor to the moves by the caller. I danced a couple of times with friends from Indy, J and N, who were at both evening sessions. Last night, I did the last contra with N and I felt so confident and relaxed that N and I started playing "guess the swing grip". We'd come out of a Hey for Four move to a Swing Your Partner, and N and I started trying different hand holds/positions for the swing, rather than the basic ballroom style of my-left-hand-holding-her-right-hand-my-right-hand-on-her-waist-her-left-hand-on-my-shoulder. It quickly turned into a game and we were laughing and being quite silly. Not too much earlier in my contra dance "career", that would have seriously messed me up. Not last night. Totally fun.

medusas_secret left at 7 am this morning, and I went back to bed for a bit. It was really good to see her again. There is another contra and swing dance session this afternoon, but I need a down day after about 10 hours of dancing in the last day and a half. I think I'll scrounge for breakfast and sit down with my book for a while.