Dance Flurry 2010 ramblings

As expected, I had a wonderful time this weekend up at the Dance Flurry.  I had four good sessions working with some great musicians and got some dancing in for fun in between.  The tech is very professional, and little details like having water bottles for the performers in every session are very kind.  There was much less snow on the ground this year, which made parking and walking around easier.  And I am just entirely pleased with the number and variety of sessions I got to do.  Being weird and being flexible really help -- the program director told me that they like how I can complement their more standard dance fare.  I have high hopes of being asked back next year.

A little navel-gazing on my sessions:

Disco Line Dances: filled a room twice as big as last year.  I'm bad at estimating numbers, but maybe 200 people?  The energy was wonderful; I was very on (and yes, I wore the scary black bell bottoms).  We did seven dances (up one from last year) and still managed to repeat the Line Hustle and Night Fever ones at the end.  The only thing that would make this session easier would be to have a raised platform to teach from, since with that big a crowd people had trouble seeing what I was doing with my feet, even with the front rows kneeling and frequently rotating the front and back rows.  This is probably unsolvable, alas -- the stages tend to have sound equipment and such on them that make them impractical as dance demo locations.  There were a number of people getting video, or at least I assume that's why they were holding their phones up in the air.  If I find any, I'll link to it, or if anyone else does, please let me know.

Branles: filled a small room to the edges; at the beginning of the session I had to split the dancers into two circles and then into concentric circles to fit everyone in.  Very bouncy session; probably should have warned people of that a bit more.  Fortunately we had the springy floor.  We did Pinagay/Charlotte individually then as a suite, then Lavandieres/Pois individually and as a suite, then finished up with Guerre.  Not a large number of dances, but people seemed to have a good time.  It's amazing how easy it is to get adults to act like kids with the miming (especially the pea-popping in Pois).

Victorian Contras & Squares: worked pretty well, but my most problematic session.  This was in the main hall, but didn't fill it to the edges, which was fine.  We did pretty much the program I wanted -- half contras, half squares, with a waltz at the end.  My biggest issue is that I am used to being in teaching mode rather than calling mode, and to teaching beginners, at that.  And I am not a regular contra dancer, so I didn't know exactly what moves would be familiar to contra dancers and what wouldn't be.  So I was overteaching some moves and underteaching others in the way I'd need for historical dancers or total newbies, which was not a perfect fit with a mix including experienced contra dancers.  I don't feel awful about this, since it was billed as a beginner-level session, but I foresee it being a general problem with working with audiences from different communities and need to find a way to address it.  Asking a hundred people if they already know something is not too practical.  On the bright side, when each dance actually started, I think my actual calling was pretty good and properly timed.

Cross-Step Waltz: back in the main hall again, filled the hall as much as practical for couple dancing, and very well-received.  Got through about 3/4 of an overplanned program, which is about right.  People were quite happy that I brought handouts; apparently that's unusual at the Flurry.  Cross-step remains my single most popular item at festivals and I feel like I'm doing a decent job spreading it as a dance.

In between my own sessions, in no particular order:

Very nice ride up with one of my newest local dance students as a passenger.  Nice to get to know someone outside of class, and she was local to Saratoga, so she could do all the navigating.

Balboa class taught by the couple who taught me my Bluebird year at Swing Out New Hampshire, hurrah!  He was wearing his scary fluorescent-green shoes.  Interesting variation in the basic step: second step being sideways instead of straight back, more of a box-step effect.  Must ask about this.  It's certainly easier to lead, but never had any other Balboa teacher suggest this before.  I danced as a lead, keeping more distance than is typical for Balboa (to avoid what I refer to as Teh Squishy).  Did well at leading both up-holds and down-holds (breaks) and managed pivots pretty well (though they weren't called that).  Could not manage to turn clockwise but went counter-clockwise very smoothly.  I still refuse to learn to lead Lindy but can resign myself to leading Balboa since it's so much like the other dance forms I do.

I found out what Texas Two-Step is, though a little digging on the web suggests that opinions differ.  At the Flurry, it was a foxtrot rhythm: SSQQ.  I do wish that the band playing for the session had stayed with music more suited to that in the following dance time, though; when it drifted off to swing and blues, so did the dancers.  It was a great band, though, a real pleasure to dance to.  Note to self: research and learn this version of Texas Two-Step.  Big problem with this class: so many people taking it that it was packed like a herd of cattle.  Hard to dance, hard to see teachers.  The Flurry needs to magically sprout another big hall for couple dancing.

Another blues class with another set of entirely different material.  Not sure I liked the main moves taught, but that's a matter of taste.  I was very pleased to get a useful shorthand explanation of why the pulsing or foot-tapping: to fill the extra beats on the slow steps.  Practiced in the lead role and had good free practice afterwards with J. to some fabulous music.

Great hambo class.  Overcrowded to the point that only half the dancers could dance at once, but the teachers did a good job of handling this.  I decided it was crowded enough that I stopped dancing and sat and took very careful notes, so I now feel like I have a better understanding of the dance.  The keywords: asynchronous canter pivots.  With this understanding, I'll be able to work it out at home with a partner; with all my research work, I am rather good at working out dances from notes.  Teacher claimed that it was not possible to do Hambo in ballroom position.  Suspect she is wrong about this and in any case now feel challenged to prove that it can be done.  Will allow myself to follow my impulse because I was very good last week about not engaging with Someone Who is Wrong on the Internet.

English session with my friend Graham Christian: a nice bit of gentle dancing, very smoothly taught/called.  Thought about triple minor teaching/calling again; ignored instructions about "twos and threes" and did just fine.

Contras.  I kept coming in for "mellow" contra tunes, which I actually don't like as much.  I like very driving music for my contras; I don't want to be mellow.  Oh, well.  Overall quality of dancers was quite high, which was nice.  Crowded sets, even in the main hall.

Still haven't managed to take any of the tango sessions with the highly-recommended teacher due to my own schedule constraints.  Maybe next year.

My favorite little restaurant, Esperanto, has doubled in size.  Good for them!

With morning sessions both days, I was not up for late dancing and kept very sedate hours at my lovely homestay.  Felt exhausted all weekend; I suspect this is part psychological.  I use up a lot of energy when teaching and then crash afterwards.  For someone not naturally extroverted, it's strenuous to be so outgoing so much of the time.  (Yeah, dance teaching: really not the ideal career for an introvert.  So it goes.)

I continue to get a lot of great ego-boosting feedback in the halls with people coming up and saying how great my sessions were.  I am in danger of getting a swelled head.  Of course, the sample is skewed -- people who don't like something will rarely go out of their way to accost the teacher.  Strangest moment: after politely sharing a sofa with a couple of dancers while eating some pizza on Sunday, they told me when they got up to leave how honored they were to share a couch with a celebrity.  That's certainly a first!  Makes me feel a little weird, too.

As I was on my way out the door Sunday, I found someone with a hula hoop and stayed a bit longer to do some hooping (waist: mediocre; hoop small and light for me.  arms: excellent; I managed to toss without dropping and to go all the way down to the floor while twirling.)  We agreed to try to get a hoop session at next year's Flurry.

Left mid-afternoon Sunday because I was so tired and had a very rough drive back.  Ate apples to stay awake.  Four apples in three hours is too many apples.  Got home and fell into bed.

Comments

[Serge]

"...Being weird and being flexible really help..."

Maybe I should have a mug made for you that says that.

Glad to hear you had a good time!

[Marilee J. Layman]

Hooping is a dance?

[George]

I witnessed your Disco Line Dance class & although I did not participate I thoroughly enjoyed watching it. i thought you did a great job in teaching the moves & keeping the energy level up throughout the class.

But question for you - I happened to be sitting near a group of younger participants - a group that seemed to know one another & besides noticing that they were enjoying the class, I had the feeling that maybe they were dance students since the way i saw it, they were exceptional dancers. Do you know anything about them?

[Susan de Guardiola]

Hi George,
Thanks for the kind words about my session!

I think I know what group you meant, but I don't know anything about them. There were a lot of really exceptional young dancers at the Flurry, so perhaps they do some other form of dance and their experience just carries over to the line dances.

[Susan de Guardiola]

Marilee,
Hooping to music while doing dance movement = hoopdance. Here is a video. I am just a beginner, not nearly that talented.

[Marilee J. Layman]

Ah, that must take a lot of coordination!

[Serge]

"...I am just a beginner, not nearly that talented..."

I expect you will soon be, at which point we will be hoping for Susan's hooping movies.

[AJ]

Hooping is pretty popular at the parties my dance studio hosts... They tend to clear the floor. The good ones get space because everyone is watching them, the bad ones get space because no one wants to get hit by an errant hoop ;)

Glad that you had a good time at Flurry!

[Susan de Guardiola]

Yeah, I still have problems with the errant hoop bit. My tosses are getting much better though, at least as long as I only do them with my left hand! And I can now go from a standing position to lying on the floor while twirling a hoop on either hand without losing it!

[Don Harvey]

If you are going to puzzle out the Hambo, you might enjoy this:

In Portland OR, which has a large Norwegian population, we have been doing hambo's (just the turning part, not the whole traditional folkdance) interspersed with redowas--the footwork transition is quite economical going from redowa to hambo, at the moment that the follower is trailing (facing forward) line of dance. Coming back to redowa is a bit athletic, but if you bear in mind the footfall patterns of the two dances, you can see that the weld seam of the redowa/hambo join are clean (well, clean-ish--you have to recover from coming back to the redowa not on the waltz's root beat, but on what Richard calls the alternate downbeat):

Hambo (just the turning part):

follow: *LEFT, TOGETHER, RIGHT
lead: *RIGHT, LEFT, TOGETHER

Redowa (or rotary waltz, which is also intermixable):
follow: RIGHT, LEFT, RIGHT, *LEFT, RIGHT, LEFT
lead: LEFT, RIGHT, LEFT, *RIGHT, LEFT, RIGHT

Notice where the stars match up in the listing above.

By the way, for what it may be worth, the hambo rotation is, like the other vintage waltz basics, symmetric, but offset 120 degrees between the lead and the follow. Which has to be so, as you are completing a cycle in 3, rather than 6 counts.

The polska is symmetric on the same footwork pattern as the
hambo, offset 120 degrees.

[Susan de Guardiola]

Don,
Yes, I had already noticed that the ACPs in hambo could be extracted as a waltz variation and will use them in various dances as soon as my partner masters them.