23 Sep
2013
23 Sep
'13
5:06 p.m.
Social circle of dancers extending past dance time, after dance hangouts,
making friends.
On Sep 23, 2013 6:07 PM, "Mark Stowe" <mkstowegnv(a)gmail.com> wrote:
Research suggests that we humans are happiest when we
are succeeding at
something that we can just barely accomplish. I have been contradancing
for 38 years and I keep inventing and learning new flourishes, dips/ swing
move interjections, putting in extra spins, running between lines and
conspiring with fellow dancers to alter order and gender and create new
interactions with defacto trail buddies that 'weren't in the dance'. The
only limit to challenging yourself is not straying into being late and
staying within the bounds of what your particular fellow dancer will enjoy
which means that there is constant strategic intellectual exercise as well.
The happiness of contradancers is infective and the inclusiveness is
inspiring.
As a biologist I believe (with all due modesty and suspicion of teleology)
that life evolved for ~4 billion years on earth precisely so that there
could be contradancing :).
On Mon, Sep 23, 2013 at 4:51 PM, Sam Whited <sam(a)samwhited.com> wrote:
On 09/23/2013 06:12 AM, Jeanette Mill wrote:
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Simply answer the question - what made you
addicted to contra?
When I first started, it was probably the fact that I couldn't stop
smiling the entire time I was dancing (or for several hours afterwards).
I was terrible, kept breaking the line, didn't understand half the
caller's instructions, etc. but I still couldn't stop smiling.
It might also be the fact that I `just got' the swing (even if I didn't
get most of the other moves). People asked me how long I'd been dancing,
and told me what a great swing I had even though I'd never actually been
to a dance before; it was nice to know that contra was actually simple
enough that all I had to do was walk around someone and they'd think I
was relatively good at it unlike, say, Swing dancing (my other favorite
form of dance) which took me days and days to even get the basic down.
I've seen this in a lot of other new dancers since then; I ask them how
long they've been dancing only to find that this is their first time and
they `just get' what I now know as the concept of `giving weight'.
After I had danced for a while and branched out into other kinds of
dancing, I realized that I also liked contra because no one takes it too
seriously (well, a few people I know do, but I make a point of not
dancing with them). You can cock about, experiment, break half the line,
or just make something up and as long as you can run back and swing your
partner when the caller says too it will all be okay and you'll have a
good time (I know a lot of people will disagree with that one; but it's
one of the things that makes me love contra, so there you are).
I also love the fact that you sweat a lot. I tried ECD a couple of
times, and while I enjoyed the people, and thought a lot of the dances
were really interesting, I couldn't help but wonder why I'd want to do
something that didn't leave me sweaty and breathless afterwards. Lots of
people I know love that sort of thing, but it wasn't for me. It felt too
`delicate' (there are also lots of other issues that made me not
especially love ECD, but they're rather offtopic).
Contra is like driving a Pagani Zonda that's thinking of new and
interesting ways of killing you every 5 seconds, and some other forms of
dance are like driving an old VW Bug: they don't go above 50 MPH, have
the engine on the wrong end of the car, and were conceived by Hitler
(that analogy made more sense in my head before I started typing it
out...).
—Sam
--
Sam Whited
pub 4096R/EC2C9934
https://samwhited.com/contact
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