4 Jan
2013
4 Jan
'13
10:22 p.m.
On Fri, Jan 04, 2013, Alan Winston wrote:
On 1/4/2013 7:49 AM, Aahz Maruch wrote:
Okay, it was not at all clear from your original post that you were
talking about a subset of flourishes, specifically ones disrupting the
dance.
On Thu, Jan 03, 2013, Kalia Kliban wrote:
Ah, I thought you were saying "Alan doesn't speak for me" while I now
think you're saying "Alan doesn't have the right to speak for the
entire community." So I will clarify that across a fairly broad swath
of Bay Area callers, dance organizers, and volunteers in the late
1980s, "hot-dogging" and "hot-doggers" were fairly standard terms,
and
they referred to people who did flourishes to the possible detriment
of the overall dance - showy swing dance balances that intruded into
other dancers spaces, men cranking women around in twirls, swinging
extra-long and being late for the next figure, grabbing neighbors
nonconsensually for a swing in the middle of the hey, not taking hands
along long lines and instead one partner drops the other partner to
the floor and picks (her, usually) up, a guy who used to literally
pick women up and put them on his shoulder for lines of four down the
hall. "We" (Bay area dance organizers, callers, and volunteers I
talked to in the late 1980s) called it hot-dogging and considered it a
problem. On 1/3/2013 8:21 AM, Aahz Maruch wrote:
My point/snark was that using "we" as Alan did implies a kind of
agreement that I think is vastly overgeneralizing here. As I wrote in
the part of my post you elided, this has long been a source of tension
across multiple dance communities, I'd bet it probably goes back hundreds
or thousands of years.
Your point about people disrupting the dance with flourishes is
appropriate, but I don't think that making grandiose statements about
community attitudes toward flourishes helps any. On Thu, Jan 03, 2013, Alan Winston wrote:
>
>I don't think you need this for the argument; there were flourishes
>when I started contra dancing in 1985 (but we called the people who
>did them "hot-doggers" and complained about them).
Which "we" are you talking about?
I'm one of them. It's possible to flourish responsibly, but that is
often not the case. [...] Over the years the flourish baseline has adjusted, we
don't hear a
lot about hot-dogging, and so on. But *I* internally still feel
that no other dancer should do anything to me without at least my
implied consent that keeps me from following the callers directions,
no other dancer should rob me of agency (and the stupid "make an arch
instead of R&L thru" thing is asymmetrical, keeps me from following
the directions, and doesn't give me a way to decline), everybody
should release their neighbors or partners in time to dance with me
on time, and should dance in a way that shows awareness and at least
minimal consideration of the people around them.
If you disagree with that, let's discuss it. But I haven't seen you
dance in a way that looks like you disagree with it.
Overall I agree; I try to maintain awareness of other dancers around me
and avoid flourishes that will affect anyone who either doesn't want or
isn't prepared to deal with them.
However, I'm indeed guilty of the arch on R&L thru. ;-) I like it
because it permits the more balanced twirling of a California twirl
(I think it's easier for the man to twirl with a California twirl than
the standard courtesy turn because of the forward movement).
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