#Contra Dance

[incendavery]

the 'lark and robin' sticker turned out SO CUTE

join the sticker of the month club on my patreon by the end of march to get one of your own!

[hidefdoritos]

I just went to a swing dance for the first time! I really, really recommend it.

-The crowd was mostly homeschooling families and middle aged couples, so exactly what you'd expect in the American midwest.

-Everyone was SO nice and polite!

-What we did is called "called" dancing, so there's a person (caller) at the microphone the whole time.

-Before the music starts, everyone lines up. The caller announces the moves that are about to happen, and everyone walks through them as a practice run.

-Once the band strikes up (did I mention the live music??!), the caller still announces every motion before it happens.

-What we did was technically contra dancing. You start off dancing with a partner, and you're neighbors with another pair. You go through 4-6 motions that all take about 8 beats of music, and then you move up/down the line to another set of neighbors.

-My swing-dancing brother and SIL, who invited me, said it's a wonderful easy introduction. Less footwork than proper swing.

-Asking someone to dance isn't a romantic thing. Can be, but not necessarily. I found a confident-looking guy there by himself, told him I was new, and asked him how it worked. Danced like three dances with him, and it was fun! He taught me a lot.

-Bring a BIG water bottle. It gets sweaty and hot SO fast.

-Everyone else is also very sweaty. I was self-conscious about a guy putting his hand onto my sweaty back, but putting my hand onto his soaking wet shoulder was reassuring. And gross, but still fun.

-Also bring your inhaler. I didn't. I was fortunate to be spared an attack, but I had to sit out the last dance.

-Due to the general shortage of men, there was a little table with pre-tied neckties. Girls who were dancing the guys' part just slipped one on for distinction. Sure, your partner knows which role you're taking, but by the time you two have moved down the entire line, your inattentive neighbors could be confused.

-This one was in a church. I imagine they're also in gyms and community centers.

-I can't guarantee they'll all be this good, but in my experience it was easy and fun and welcoming. There was a mathematical precision to how all the couples moved, and also an artistic fun to swinging around and twirling a lot!

-It was all by donation, and it went to the caller and the band. Support your local arts!

-Highly recommend wearing a big swooshy skirt. :D

[stuffboblikes]

Dana got a great video of me contra dancing this Sunday at Contrashock!

[buttonloops]

sometimes I go contra dancing on Monday nights

but it's awkwardly located, where I either have to go straight there from work and then kill an hour until it starts, or go home and turn around and go right back out

so even when I make it work

like tonight

I end up sitting in my car just as it's starting and thinking I just want to go home, can I go home now?

It's so frustrating to squint at the tea leaves of my soul and try to divine whether I will regret going out or regret staying in

the fatigue's been hitting again, so maybe I'd feel better resting and going to bed early?

but also sometimes dancing and socializing feels wonderful

anyway here I am, dragged myself all the way here and now I just wanna go home

[strikeslip]

Yesterday, a friend and I were talking about contra dance, and I've been thinking about dance styles since then. So we was talking about swings in terms of force applied, but I am a sucker for X/Y graphs, and I think my graph labels for swings would be vigorous-vs-graceful and high-information-vs-low-information. For example:

An "Every Flourish Known To Mankind" type dancer is going to be a vigorous/high-information style. These dancers sometimes even ask me to apply more force to them. I feel like these dancers signal with their whole bodies, hand and arm movement and more.

A new and enthusiastic dancer might be vigorous/low-information. They are dancing as hard as they can! The extreme case here sometimes makes me worried my bad shoulder is going to give way. Kinda the contra equivalent of fearing an unskilled swordsman because you can't predict what they will do.

Graceful/high-information dancers are the precise crew. For example, there's a person I've often danced with who keeps his outside arm (the pointing arm in the swing) at full extension with an extremely light amount of force, which gives a different sort of tension than applying force, but does give enough tension to be communicative. I usually feel like these dancers give more information from hand movements than arm movements, though obviously they still move their arms. Sometimes these dancers do subtle vocalizations or little body movements that mark 8-counts which are very useful to me as a new person.

Graceful/low-information is old folks and tired folks doing the minimum movements and newer folks who aren't accidentally trying to rip my arm off. Can be very restful pleasant dance partners; good opportunities to focus on the dance steps as opposed to just desperately keeping up with a more experienced partner. I would consider myself in this category.

The point of the X/Y graph is, there are are things to learn that specifically relate to information-passing, like signalling a spin with hand movement, or holding tension with a partner, but I think there's both a vigorous and graceful approach to the information passing. So if I'm getting better at spinning in place as opposed to spinning with my feet going everywhere, that'd be a move towards the graceful side of the spectrum. Or if I decide to put my whole body into an allemande, that would be more vigorous. But I think the high-info/low-info axis is really the one that reflects experience in terms of partner holds. Then separately there's other skills like knowing the actual moves, being able to do them on time, remembering the dance, and recovering from mistakes. For example, if I ever get to the point where I can remember a set of moves by the name of the dance, I'd be pretty excited about that. I also think people get to know each other and match levels / code-switch to some degree.

I'm still very new to contra, but I do like coming up with terminology like this for myself. It helps me firm up ideas of what to do and remember context. There's a two-dance weekend coming up for me, which includes a beginner waltz workshop, and I'm very excited for it! May even go to the afterparty and test my terminology on people.

[gay-victorian-astronomer]

zonked as fuck right now on contra dancing

[idontseatheporpoise]

I need to talk about contra dance with contra dancers of color, but the resources to connect us all are so scarce (read: non-existent) so if you’re a contra dancer of color, pls holler at me because I need to have a discussion about so many different things in the PW community

[scenicworlds]

April 14, 2024

Played piano for the Open Band for a full dance! Portland, ME.

[thefortysecondolive]

Went to a local contra while I’m back home and it was the first time since I started dancing in 2018 that I’ve danced to a call of Ladies and Gents (in New England I danced Larks & Ravens; in the PNW it’s been Larks & Robins) and man, that was… disorienting in ways I didn’t expect it to be.

There was the anticipated oddness of getting used to new calls, but that wasn’t bad. I dance both parts, so I’m constantly second-guessing which I’m dancing at any given time. What threw me more was that I hated being referred to as a lady in this context, and didn’t much care to be called a gent either, so no matter which role I was dancing, it took me out of the dance to hear those roles called.

The other thing is that my hometown is, I would say, famously liberal. I wasn’t expecting, here of all places, to find that a contra community that’s still offended by gender-inclusive language, and that feels weirdly out-of-step with how I’ve always understood my home.

Also someone guessed I’d learned to dance in Nashville, which was off by about 1,000 miles but very interesting.

[respectissexy]

Digby and Wilma Thistlespring are Unitarian Universalist coded because they love folk music, their child is adopted (for most UUs this is due to being gay but you know) and most importantly, they teach comprehensive sex education out of a large binder. In this essay I will...

(Pictured: the actual binder that I taught sex ed out of earlier this year.)

[francesderwent]

sometimes you abandon a sinking ship long term relationship and fall into a dramatic short term love affair which absolutely devastates you, and for a long time ever afterward you can’t process the one except through the other. and the real closeness of the long relationship can’t compete with the closeness that was purposely manufactured to manipulate you, because it was literally designed to outshine reality. and so the loss of that eclipses everything else because when it’s gone you’ve lost the illusion and the reality, what you thought it was and everything you gave up to have it. the girls who were messy in college get it.

[incendavery]

"no": you can say it!

[theodoradove]

Making plans with a dear friend who is a straight cis male twenty-five years my senior...hurrah for unexpected connections outside of my elder millennial queer lady wheelhouse.

[stuffboblikes]

Contrashock!

[awesomeifidosaysomyself]

do you like live music? do you want a reason to leave your house? do you like dancing in a chill environment with pretty accessible dance moves? do you want to feel kinda like a jane austen character? if so you might like contra dancing!

[strikeslip]

All contra dances where I drink my entire 1.2 liter water bottle are my favorite contra dances.