Rixosous

Arisia 2012 Schedule

My crazy schedule this weekend for Arisia is below.  This is after I received my original schedule and sent an incredulous email to program, events, and the con chair pointing out that I was scheduled for over twenty-five hours of work (masquerade eats noon-midnight Saturday with rehearsal and stuff), including a couple of times when I was scheduled for two places at once, and got them to eliminate another half-dozen items.  I'm not sure what part of "no more than six items" was unclear; it seems like it should be an easy check within their program software to compare total number scheduled to the number one enters for "maximum total items" and flag someone if the former is greater than the latter.  Likewise the "two places at the same time" problem.

Here's the list:

Three happy things

Three happy things from this weekend's Harvest Ball, run by the gender-role-free contra dance gang up in Jamaica Plain, Massachusetts.  Two funny, one serious.

Funny suggestion over dinner:

In a discussion that was shifting between the different varieties of 5/4 dance in various historical eras and the need for me to make demo DVDs and the fact that if I did I would use a female partner and call them "Two Girls Dance", the following helpful suggestion:

"Bill them as HOT 5/4 GIRL-GIRL ACTION!!"

That does sound a lot more exciting than "How to dance the Five-Step", doesn't it?  Hmm.

Funny exchange:

Me: Are you my sassy gay friend, then?
Him: I could be!
Me: No, wait, I already have a sassy gay friend.
Him: I could be your sassy gay Jewish friend.
Me: I already have one of those, too...maybe you could be my best-dressed sassy gay Jewish friend?

After that, we had a waltz.

And one serious bit:

It's odd to have a time-travel moment at an event with such a modern atmosphere in general.  Not in costume, not dancing Regency style...actually, I was dancing the leader's role with a guy in the follower's role, while wearing a vaguely Goth minidress and skirt and stripey black and white knee socks.  Can't get much less historical!  And yet...when we danced the most modern version of "Money Musk" (thirty-two bars of dance squeezed asymmetrically into a twenty-four bar version of the tune) I was so pleased to be able to fall into a triple minor progression (normal for me, unlike pretty much the entire rest of the dance world) and enjoy the feel of working my way slowly up the set, and then that moment with my partner when we were ready to start dancing down and we went into that right hand swing, active couple all the way down to the bottom of the set...it was glorious.  Part of it was the tune, which is one of my favorites and very compelling to dance to, but part of it was the extra elasticity of the modern contra styling and the tightened timing overlaying the old-fashioned figures with their notable difference in activity between active couples and the others.  I'm not expressing it very well, but I just really like that contrast and hurtling down the set with the extra dramatic zing of being in the position for a few seconds per repetition of performer to audience, active to receptive, with the different type of figures that permits, rather than the consistent equality of role of most modern contra choreography, which I often find rather dull.

I think this attachment to contrast occurs in other areas of my life as well.  Food for thought.

Balticon 2011 Schedule

My exciting schedule of events for Balticon this weekend, with official descriptions and my comments:

Friday 10:00pm-midnight, Valley (Ball) Room
Dancing in the Gears Steam Punk Ball
Susan de Guardiola with Irene Urban and Jeff Poretsky (floor managers)
Attention all aeronauts, aethernauts, lady and gentleman adventurers, mad scientists, inventors, and other Steampunks and neo-Victorians! Join us at 10 pm  Friday night at for a time-traveling formal evening at the Steampunk Ball!  Become part of the living clockwork of Victorian and Victorian-inspired set dances and spin madly with your partner to romantic waltzes and lively polkas. No previous experience is needed; all dances will be taught by dance mistress Susan de Guardiola. Music will be an eclectic mix of modern and nineteenth century. Steampunk, neo-Victorian, or Victorian costume encouraged and admired but not required. Airships and time machines should be parked outside the ballroom. No sabers, ray guns, or clanks permitted on the dance floor.

(I wrote this description, so it's accurate!)

Saturday night/Sunday morning midnight-1:30am, Salon A
Eye of Argon - the Play
Susan de Guardiola, Daniel Kimmel, Marty Gear, Walter H. Hunt, Hildy Silverman, Michael A. Ventrella
"One of the genre's most beloved pieces of appalling prose" presented in all its theatrical glory." 

(Actually, we've sort of combined reading the play with a Survivor-style voting-off-the-island system that leaves the rejected readers acting out the story as we keep reading.  Calling this a play is kind of a stretch.  This is the third time out for Hildy, Michael, and I's roving Argon road show.  Maybe we'll read the second half of the story this time!)

Sunday, 11:00am-12:00noon, Valley (Ball) Room     
Martian Parlor Croquet: A Steampunk Diversion
Susan de Guardiola, Jeff Poretsky, Irene Urban
Victorian explorers, adventurers, chrononauts, and aethernauts! Join us in the fine sands of the remote Martian Canal Estates, where the well-dressed 19th-century tourist and all civilized alien entities may indulge in the genteel yet cutthroat Martian pastime of parlor croquet. Portable gravity generators encouraged to prevent loss of croquet balls into the aether.  Tentacular assistance prohibited.

(I wrote this description too.  We have tiny croquet mallets and we are not afraid to use them!)

Sunday, 3:00pm-4:50pm, Parlor 1041
Regency Tea and Games
Susan de Guardiola, Irene Urban, Jeff Poretsky
Come join us for afternoon High Tea and Regency era games.

(That's not what I sent them!  Here's the longer version:  Take a trip back in time to the society of early 19th century England and the games played during the era of Jane Austen, "Master and Commander", and the Napoleonic Wars!  Enjoy the pleasures of whist, the intricacy of picquet, or a cutthroat session of spillikins.  Games will be taught.  Regency costume encouraged (but not required).  Tea and light nibbles will be served!)

Steampunk World's Fair 2011 Schedule

This weekend, May 20-22, I will be appearing at the Steampunk World's Fair in Somerset, New Jersey and doing a whole list of exciting events -- a ball, dance workshops, lectures, and parlor croquet!  Details:

Friday, May 20th, 4pm-5pm
Victorian Ballroom Etiquette Talk
Victorian ballroom etiquette for beginners.  Proper bows and courtesies, how to perform introductions (and what you can do when youhave one) and the secret strategies of the dance card!

Friday, May 20th, 8pm-11pm
Formal Dance: The Big Brass Ball Part 1
Join us for a time-traveling formal evening at the Big Brass Ball!  Enjoy Victorian and Victorian-inspired set dances and spin madly with your partner to romantic waltzes and lively polkas.  No previous experience is needed; all dances will be taught by dance historian
Susan de Guardiola.  Music will be an eclectic mix of modern and nineteenth century.  Formal costume encouraged!

Saturday, May 21st, 2pm-3pm 
Germans: Silly Victorian Dance Games
What those wacky Victorians got up to in the ballroom after a few drinks too many!  Blindfolds, musical chairs, fan-slapping and more.  Freud would love it!

Saturday, May 21st, 4pm-5pm 
Victorian Dance Workshop I: Polkamania!
In-depth lesson on two popular Victorian ballroom dances, polka and
schottische and dancing to historical and modern music!  No experience
needed!

Sunday 10am-11am         
Martian Croquet
Explorers, adventurers, chrononauts, and aethernauts!  Join us in the
fine sands of the remote Martian Canal Estates, where the well-dressed
19th-century tourist and all civilized alien entities may indulge in
the genteel yet cutthroat Martian pastime of parlor croquet.

Sunday, May 22nd, 3pm-4pm
Victorian Dance workshop II: Whirl of Waltz
The secrets of how to spin madly around the dance floor in Victorian-style waltzing to a wild mix of historical and modern music!  No experience needed!

I'd be happy to meet up with any remaining Rixo readers -- find me there!

Three Good Things

As you all know, last summer I quit my day job to try to make a go of doing dance, writing, and random freelance jobs full-time.  It's not quite a living yet, though I'm getting closer, but not having a day job and the resulting restrictions on time off means that I'm free to take exciting gigs as they come along.  "Exciting" can actually get really exciting.  I thought after my big New Zealand/Australia celebration-of-freedom trip last summer that I would be out of luck on interesting travel due to extreme poverty.  But that doesn't seem to be quite the case.

Here are the three most exciting gigs I have coming up this year, one of which has been announced for months and two of which I've been keeping quiet until the details were confirmed:

Spoiled rotten

An hour of dance research:

"Finding out what music they used for this dance is going to be a drag."

(15 minutes later)

"Finding recordings of these particular songs is going to be difficult."

(15 minutes later)

"Finding the exact recording made in 1927 is never going to happen."

(15 minutes later)

"Finding more than one late 1920s recording so we have a variety of music to dance to is unlikely."

(15 minutes later)

I love the internet.

Darkovercon 2010 Schedule

As usual, I'm off to Darkovercon (formally known as Darkover Grand Council Meeting XXXIII) for the Friday through Sunday of Thanksgiving weekend.  I'm doing two dance events and my usual charity fundraising work, which is not so hectic a schedule that I won't have time to just hang out.

The specifics:

Halloween weekend's dancing

Halloween is pretty much a busman's holiday for me, since I dress up funny all the time.  But I hopped up to Boston this past weekend for a bit of costumed dancing Saturday night and Sunday afternoon at, respectively, the Commonwealth Vintage Dancers' Black Cat Speakeasy and Mostly Waltz Boston's Halloween afternoon dance.

Saturday night at the Speakeasy I decided to get into the spirit of historical fancy dress and thus wore the green tango dress and gloves that I made/dyed to surprise S.J. Tucker with a tango at her performance of "Alligator in the House" at Lunacon a few years ago. It was comfortable and easy to dance in and very much in the fancy dress mode: a dress and gloves of the appropriate color and a stuffed animal accessory.  That's me at left, with my alligator.

Three is better than two

Anyone who's still reading Rixo may have noticed that I have become the poster child for failing to blog in anything like a regular and timely fashion, though I'm planning to spend some of the weekend slowly chipping away at my double-digit list of unfinished posts.

This has been due both to lack of time and to a general malaise over the last eighteen months which has left me struggling with this odd reluctance to finish and post much of anything.  It's something between procrastination and perfectionism.  Hence the long list of drafts.  It's a little better over on Kickery (my dance history blog), though I have some similar troubles there.

So I've come up with a brilliant (for some value of brilliant) new project: a third blog!

Off to Stanford

After six years, I am once again getting to make a pilgrimage-like trip to Stanford for a wonderful nine days of dancing: Stanford Dance Weekend followed by Stanford Historical Dance Week and then possibly Stanford Waltz Weekend (either dancing if there's space or just observing).  I'm going primarily as a student, though I'll be giving a pair of seminars that I've been stressing about for a month, one on Regency era dance developments and dancing master feuds and one extremely geeky one on choreographic connections across five centuries of set dances.  But mostly I'll just be learning.  I'm signed up as a lead (well, I signed up as a follow, but volunteered to be switched to improve balance) but will switch roles back and forth as necessary to balance any individual class.

I expect results similar to my last such trip in 2004: a substantial improvement in overall dance skills plus a whole lot of new repertoire.  This is a rare chance for me to do everything from Renaissance to Regency to Swing to Cross-Step Waltz in one trip and to learn from expert instructors from all over the world.  And compared to 2004, I'm a much better dancer and leader already and can probably absorb new information more efficiently.  Now I just have the agony of making choices like: Charleston and collegiate swing or Barriera and Gracca Amorosa?  Waltz dips or cross-step troika?  Blues or Steampunk?  Fusion waltz or fusion foxtrot?  Stretch myself with new material every single period or take some classes where I'm already familiar with it to give myself a break?  Do as much Regency as possible to dance it with other skilled dancers or skip it because I already know most of it?  These are lovely problems to have!

I fly out Friday morning.  I can't wait.

I will have limited time available from the dance week, mostly dinner on various evenings.  If any Rixo readers are in the Bay Area and would like to get together, let me know.  I rather expect there to be Wifi access everywhere, given the location, so I'll be checking email and blogs periodically.  I won't have a car, however, so you'll have to come to Stanford to fetch me.

Stardancing

I heard the news today that Jeanne Robinson had died over the weekend, unsurprising since I knew of her fight with cancer, but saddening in the loss of a lovely artist of both words and dance.  I never knew her personally, but she and Spider's novel Stardance inspired one of those lovely songs that has stuck in my mind since I first heard it a quarter-century or so ago and still speaks to me deeply.  When I got my very first webpage, back in 1992, its primitive content consisted entirely of a quote from this song. 

I don't know who wrote it; I'm guessing one of the filk groups that performed at Shore Leave back in the mid-1980s.  I can still hear their voices in my head from an old live cassette tape I made then.  I transcribed the lyrics as accurately as I could long ago and repost them below with no intent to infringe copyright.  They express my thoughts more eloquently than I can myself.

So, and with sympathy to Spider and in thanks to Jeanne and to all those whose diverse arts leave the world a better place and stir creativity in others...

I shall leave the earth behind and dance where I am free
To dream of greater things
I shall say good-bye to air and choreography
And dance as thought I've wings.

Steampunk World's Fair Schedule

I'm going to be scooting home from Kalamazoo very quickly this year to do a couple of things at the Steampunk World's Fair this weekend.  My schedule:

Friday, Embassy Suites Ballroom, 8:00-9:00: Victorian Dance Lesson

Friday, Embassy Suites Ballroom, 9:00-10:00: Victorian Ballroom Dancing

Saturday, Embassy Suites Ballroom, 2:30-3:30: Victorian Dance Etiquette

Yes, there's sort of a theme here. 

For the etiquette class I'll discuss ballroom manners and dance cards and teach people how to bow or curtsy in proper Victorian style.

I'll be around at the Fair in between these and into Saturday evening, but probably will go home that night since I have a million things to do to get ready for Balticon (Steampunk Ball!  Hoopdance!  Martian Croquet!)  I'm hoping to see/hear Professor Elemental perform, but otherwise I have no special plans except enjoying myself.  I will probably be underdressed relative to everyone else.

As usual, I'd love to say hi to any Rixo readers; catch me at the end of one of my sessions for best results.

Once More, Kalamazoo

I'll be in Kalamazoo, Michigan, for a very fast trip Thursday evening and Friday morning this week to deliver a paper at the 45th International Congress on Medieval Studies.  I'm part of session 243, Friday morning at 10:00, "Long Ago and Far Away: Intra-European Perspectives on Early Modern Dance" sponsored by Early Dance at Kalamazoo.  My paper is called "Expressions of Medievalism in Late Nineteenth- and Early Twentieth-Century Dance Manuals" and is unofficially known as "look what those clowns did to the pavane!"  My co-presenters are Thea Frank speaking about the dance Quanto Dyspayne from 17th century England and Michael Cramer, discussing reconstructing masques.

I'll be heading out immediately after my session, so anyone who wants to hang out with me at the Congress should let me know in advance so we can plan to meet Thursday night.

Wedding fun

A lot of people seem to be getting married lately.  Earlier this evening it was the turn of my friends Alexia and Mike.  Alexia's one of my dance students, and Mike used to be the roommate of another of my dance students, which seems to be enough of a connection for Mike to give me some sort of indirect credit for their meeting and thus their current and future happiness.  This is the third couple in the last few years that's claimed they met through my dance stuff.  Can I figure out a way to use this in advertising?

Pilobilus (Shubert Theater, New Haven, April 30, 2010)

Despite their being resident in Connecticut, I'd never before seen Pilobilus perform.  This evening's playbill explains Pilobilus as "a phototropic zygomycete -- a fungus that grows in barnyards and pastures...It is also a highly unusual dance company."  That's a bit of an understatement.  It seems like a sort of bastard child of modern dance and contact improvisation with costumes and some creepy undertones.

That's not a bad thing, though it's not something I'm likely to get terribly excited about.  It was interesting to watch a dance performance and admire the skill and creativity of the dancers and choreographers while remaining emotionally uninvolved except for occasionally being a bit disturbed.  It was certainly a unique experience for me.

NEFFA approaches

After spending all of last weekend dancing, naturally I am planning to spend all of this weekend dancing.  I'll be heading up to Mansfield, Massachusetts on Saturday and Sunday for the New England Folk Festival (NEFFA), where I will be teaching three workshop sessions and doing a dance performance.  In between, I hope to spend some time just hanging out and dancing, maybe doing a little hooping if the weather is good.

Saturday's workshops are cross-step waltz at 11am, into to ragtime dance at 4pm, and traveling blues at 10pm.  Sunday's performance is in the 2:45 slot and will be a peculiar mix of historical and modern couple dances: two cross-step waltzes, a Regency waltz sequence, and an 1880s galop.   I was amused to find that one of the musicians for my cross-step session is actually a college yearmate of mine.  Small world.

Other sessions I hope to check out: some international folk dance, since I'll be teaching at an IFD dance camp in October; the hambo session, since I am determined to actually learn how to do it one of these days; the 19thc French quadrille because I do that myself and want to see what the other person does; the gender-free contra, which unfortunately mostly overlaps a session of my own; more contra; and some modern English country dance.

NEFFA has a substantial overlap with a number of my social circles (fannish, poly, SCA, etc.) so if any Rixo readers happen to be attending, please catch me and say hi.  The best time to find me is at the end of one of my sessions; I usually stick around for a few minutes to answer questions.

Dance, dance, and (did I mention?) dance

I like going to dance weekends, but there aren't enough of them in range for me to get to.  So this weekend I constructed my own:

A Scandalous Ball in Bohemia ~ Saturday, March 27, 2010, New Haven, CT

From the unpublished journals of J____ W______, M.D.

March 1, 188_

...after which unfortunate misadventure I arrived in his well-remembered chambers at a quarter to seven o'clock to find H_____ absent and an envelope to my address upon the mantel containing a  card of invitation for a most unusual ball:

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

The honor of your presence is requested at

Eight o'clock P.M.
Saturday, March 27th
Pratt Hall

for an evening of Terpsichorean Delights in the company of

The most Bohemian citizens of London town, including 

EXPLORERS, Actors, Mesmerists, Gamblers, INVENTORS,
Artists, Opera-Dancers, WRITERS, Adventuresses,
Military Gentlemen, American Expatriates, and POETS. 

Fancy dress is Requested.

Absolute Discretion is assured to All in attendance.

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

And which frozen dessert are you?

I had been planning to wear the Fluffy Ostrich Feather Thing to the Technocrat's Ball Saturday night, but it was apparent by about Thursday that it was just not going to happen.  A new plan was needed.  With a dance to run Friday night I didn't actually get around to thinking about it until Saturday morning when it was time to pack for the trip, at which point I was undecided between the Usual Black Bustle Thing with steampunk accessories, the Steampixie outfit, or some variation on the Mad Hatter bit I wore back in January to the Baltimore ball.

Since this was a CVD ball (meaning that I was not in charge of anything and expected to be dancing seriously), I ruled out the Mad Hatter, 'cause the hat is just not ideal for lively polkas and such.  I didn't want to just go with one of the other two outfits because I've worn them a lot for events.  But while I was studying the peach 1904 corset I wear with the Steampixie thing, I suddenly remembered that I had a bustle underskirt and drapery piece in very similar colors.  And I even knew where they were.  Out they came, and they turned out to be a rather good color match, though a 1904 corset does not make for the greatest silhouette with a bustle.  I cackled a little over the whole scheme, since no one expects me to wear pastels other than lavender.  I wouldn't be fabulously steampunk, but at least I'd be unusual.

Boston, again, and help wanted (Holmes fans)

This weekend is the last of my Boston trips for awhile; as soon as I get some publicity materials finished and my costume packed I'm on the road for a Steampunk ball tonight and a waltz afternoon tomorrow, with a meeting with my band interspersed to do some planning.  I'm hoping to squeeze sleep in there somewhere, too.  I'm not running these events -- this weekend is a combination of dancing for fun and event-promotion for a ball which I'm frantically trying to get planned for the end of March.

To that end:

HELP! 

Does anyone who reads Rixo have enough of a passion for Sherlock Holmes to have a general familiarity with the canon and enough writing skill to do some short (one-paragraph) epistles in the style of Doyle/Watson in the next few days?  If I had time to read heavily I could absorb some style by contagion, but (reality check) I don't right now, and it's been years since I've reread the stories, and I'm under omigodcrazy pressure to get a whole bunch of little blurbs written over the next week.  We're not talking pages and pages; more like murder-mystery clues in pastiche form, the length of this post or shorter.

Any takers?  I'm about to lose my mind here, and it occurred to me that this was something that could be delegated long-distance to pretty much anyone with some writing skill.

Hoop Dreams

I've finally gotten around to getting serious about the hooping that I started playing around with last fall at Darkovercon.  I went to a local hoop class, though I won't be able to attend very often since it meets on Fridays and I'm on the road or running dances most Fridays.  I have a hooping DVD to learn new moves from (a lot like reconstructing partner dance from video, except that my partner is a round piece of tubing).  And I got myself a really big hoop in bright shiny colors (from here).  Size matters; big hoops are heavier and easier to spin, especially at my height.  I don't have the muscles to handle a small one yet. 

The colors of my hoop (black-blue-purple-silver) make me feel like I'm letting it down by not wearing a matching costume.  Maybe that will come in the future, if I'm ever good enough to hoop in public.

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.

Off to the Flurry

This evening I'm off to the Dance Flurry in snowy Saratoga Springs once more!  I'm feeling very well-treated by the Flurry this year.  I have four sessions.  All were in my original schedule; no last-minute add-ons.  None are Waltz 101.  Two of them (Cross-Step Waltz and Victorian Contras & Squares) are in the main hall.  This will be my first time in the main hall.  I'm working with three groups of super musicians and friends: Spare Parts; the Flying Romanos; and the wonderful Mary Lea, Jacqueline Schwab, and Dan Beerbohm.  I'll have the magnificent Jennie Worden as my teaching partner for Cross-Step.  I made the (bottom of the) list of performer highlights on the Flurry webpage, the first time I have ever been part of the advertising.  And I get to repeat my disco line dance session from last year, for which I have procured some frightening black stretch pleather bell-bottom pants by way of setting the atmosphere.

I'm a little nervous about calling the Victorian session in the main hall, but not about teaching waltz in it.  Really, that makes sense.  I know my waltz session will draw hordes of people.  Two years ago when I did it, I had to have people dance in two separate groups since there wasn't room in the (smaller) hall for everyone to dance at once.  So it's good that they're acknowledging this by giving me a bigger space.  But the Victorian session is scarier, since it will draw the modern contra dance crowd who pretty much live in the main hall, and they're used to pretty good calling and dances that are, um, less Victorian.  So that's a more challenging crowd.

I have a new and clever method for teaching going in and out of zigzags in cross-step, which I have tested with my new local students and at a waltz workshop and a private lesson in the last month.  But a big session at the Flurry will be the true test.  I am not truly concerned; the first few experiments worked well.

The fourth session is Renaissance dances; specifically, branles from Arbeau.  No worries there.  The full schedule is up on the Flurry webpage, or you can find my personal detail schedule (minus the nervous rambling) on Kickery.

I have a passenger for the ride up but will be looking for riders to keep me company on the way back.  I will also be picking up a new and larger hoop on the way, but it does not qualify as company, being nonverbal.

I won't be totally offline this weekend -- along with scary bell bottoms for myself, I have bought my laptop new travel gear* -- but I'll be too busy to check in much.  If you're at the Flurry, find me at the end of one of my sessions -- not at the beginning and please, not in the middle -- and say hello.

Along with my own sessions, I'm hoping to finally get the Hambo to stick, find out what the Texas Two-Step is all about, practice Balboa, and continue my survey of Blues Classes With No Common Elements.

* What does it say about me that I have spent ten times as much money this week on buying wearables for my laptop as for myself?

A Clockwork Werewulf Playlist

Several people asked for the names of individual songs or a complete playlist from Saturday's Steampunk Ball.  It was an interesting event to prepare for; "Steampunk music" is a rather vague term, and much of what is labeled as such is useless for doing any sort of historical dance to.  (Left: mid-waltz at the Ball; click to enlarge)

My musical plan for this event was an eclectic mix of nineteenth-century tunes with modern tunes to which you could do Victorian dances.  I'd thought I was overpreparing, but things moved at a pretty snappy pace, so I actually went though everything I'd prepared and then some.

I didn't keep track of the music I was playing before the official start, but here is a list of the tunes, in order, that were the ball itself from when I started calling.  For the most part, I've put in links to where you can purchase either an MP3 of the individual tune or the album on which it is found.  The exceptions are where the album appears to be out of print or is otherwise beyond my ability to find online.

A Clockwork Werewulf: Steampunk Ball in Baltimore (January 23, 2010)

A word to any Maryland-or-vicinity Rixo folks:

I'm going to be precepting a Victorian Steampunk Ball in Baltimore this Saturday, January 23rd, 2010, as a fundraiser for research against Multiple Sclerosis.  Dancing will be creatively Victorian, to a mix of Victorian and modern music.  That means a mix of called set dances (contras and quadrilles) and couple dances (waltzes, polkas, schottisches).  There will be ample instruction and the set dances in particular are very beginner-friendly.  And yes, we will do my "Airship Pirates" quadrille in its beginner-friendly version!

For more information:

Team Greykell's blog.

There's also a Facebook page, but damned if I can figure out how to link to it directly from outside Facebook.  Color me clueless!

Any help spreading the word would be appreciated, and it would be great to see more friends there!

One more weekend...

One more weekend on the road, then things become calm for the holidays with three relatively quiet weekends in a row.  I can't wait.  But this weekend I'm headed up to Boston for two events:

On Saturday night, I will attend the Fezziwig Ball in Salem, which is being held by my good friends in the Commonwealth Vintage Dancers.  They've asked for costume from the lifetime of Dickens, which means 1817-1870.  I suspect they're looking more for 1830s-1860s, but I plan to take advantage of the early part of the range and wear something Empire-waisted.  With luck, this will include wearing new stays, gown, and still-TBD outer garment (since the ball is preceded by a lantern-light parade).  How much of this actually happens...well, let's just say it's going to be a long night in the sewing room.  I've already decided, given the likely temperature and my lack of sewing time, that punting on a bonnet and going with my black sheepskin hat and muff for the parading is probably a good idea.

On Sunday, I'm running an afternoon tea dance in Cambridge for CVD and Eclectic Enterprises' Mostly Victorian Tea Dance series.  (Update 12/20/09: This tea dance is CANCELED due to severe weather conditons.)  I'm likely to not be in costume for this one due to general lameness and the fact that long gowns make it harder to teach and demonstrate steps.   The format is an instruction period followed by social dancing followed by more advanced instruction, food, and more social dancing.  The dances will be a general 19th-century mix of couple dances (waltz, polka, schottische, galop) and set dances (contras, quadrilles).  I will probably focus the teaching on the schottische and polka.  Music will be some mix of recorded and live.

Given that schedule and the fact that I want to spend time Sunday morning with the friend I'm staying with, I won't really have time to socialize outside of these dances during this trip, but I would love to chat with anyone who's coming to either of these events.  I will have much more time for this at the ball than at the tea dance, since I'm not in charge of anything at the ball.

Call for Papers: Early Dance at Kalamazoo (2010)

A call for papers for a dance-oriented session at the International Congress for Medieval Studies taking place next May in Kalamazoo, Michigan.  Responses are needed pronto, as the paperwork has to be in to the Congress by the end of September.  The conference is huge and very exciting, with scholars in many disciplines from all over the world; I've presented there the last three years (including my particularly exciting travel experience in 2008) and hope to have a paper there this year as well.  They're looking for something a little beyond a simple dance reconstruction -- more on the process of reconstruction itself and the history of dance reconstruction and connections between dance history and other fields of study.

The call for papers:

Long Ago and Far Away: Intra-European perspectives on early modern dance.
Early Dance at Kalamazoo
45th International Congress on Medieval Studies (May 13-16, 2010)

Early Dance at Kalamazoo is an organization formed to encourage further scholarship at Kalamazoo in the field of early dance and its relation to other disciplines, including literature, art history, musicology, theater, history, and textiles through the interdisciplinary pursuit, independently or in conjunction, of textual and performative research. We are particularly interested in forming links between scholars in the field of dance history and those in other disciplines, as each group is, to its detriment, often unaware of the significant work done by the other. We focus on different aspects of issues in dance reconstruction and the general subject area, bringing together scholars of dance, manuscript illumination, textiles, and church history.

This year's proposed session looks at cross-cultural aspects of and perspectives on early modern dance, its history, and textual background, such as the Renaissance French interpretation of dance in the Ottoman Empire. It is a segment of the field that is rarely studied or discussed and deserves greater attention in order to further understanding of greater cross-cultural currents in 15th and 16th century Europe.

We are seeking papers dealing with these themes for the session entitled "Long Ago and Far Away: Intra-European perspectives on early modern dance."  Abstracts are to be sent to [email protected] before the end of September.

Before the Fall

(edited 10/25 with some schedule updates)

Lazy August behind me, I'm heading into an insane streak of dance gigs and associated travel.  Weekend by weekend plans from today through mid-December:

• Swing Out New Hampshire (Lindy hop as a student)
• NYC (teaching Regency & Renaissance)
• CT (DJing waltz) and Boston (teaching cross-step waltz and Steeleye Span) and NYC (Steeleye Span)
• CT (teaching quadrilles) and Rhode Island (teaching cross-step waltz)

• NYC (teaching Regency & Renaissance)
• Cape May, NJ (dance weekend: teaching Victorian, leading Victorian ball & 1910s tea dance)
• CT (DJing waltz, teaching Regency, leading Regency ball)
• MA (teaching various couple dances at gender-role-free contra dance camp)

• NYC (teaching 1830s & schottische evolution)
• [possible day job business trip to west coast during weekdays in between]
(not happening, hurrah!)
• MY ^mostly^ FREE WEEKEND AT HOME (unless I go to NJ for a 1910s ball)  (and I've decided to go)
• CT (DJing waltz) and possibly MD if a gig works out (nope, so doing an SCA event on Saturday to show off some dancing, but not leaving CT)
• PA (Philcon, leading a Victorian ball, then back to Philcon)
• MD (Darkovercon, leading a Regency ball there and teaching some 17thc country dance)

• NYC (teaching 1830s & 17thc English dance)
• CT (hosting holiday waltz party and then doing a private dance workshop) and MA (teaching/leading Regency tea dance)
• MA (attending a Victorian ball just for fun Saturday, then running a Victorian tea dance on Sunday)

There's one other gig to schedule either on that last weekend or the weekend before Christmas.  (Scheduled above.)  Then I shall rest.

So is that insane or what?  On the bright side, almost all of these signify extra income and only a few things represent actual unreimbursed expenses.  Overall, I come out ahead.  And if anyone wants to know what I did some weekend this fall, you have a handy reference list above.

I tend to be more disciplined about blogging when my life is otherwise crazy.  Having to budget time carefully seems to help.  So I don't plan to vanish all fall.  But I will be catatonic with exhaustion by Christmas -- I work a full-time day job along with all this weekend work.

I hope everyone's fall plans are equally exciting, though perhaps not equally exhausting!

Balticon 43 Program Schedule

I'm just getting ready for Balticon this weekend and as always would be happy to meet any lurking (or non-lurking) Rixo readers who want to say hi.  My program schedule consists of two costume panels and a Steampunk ball.  I haven't actually gotten a formal schedule, so I don't have full descriptions of the costume panels, but here are the bare bones of it.  I'll update if I get more info pre-con.

Dancing in the Gears (Steampunk Ball)
Friday, 10:00pm-???
Susan de Guardiola with Jeff Poretsky, Raven Stern, and Marc Hartstein
Attention all aeronauts, aethernauts, lady and gentleman adventurers, mad scientists, inventors, and other Steampunks and neo-Victorians! Join us at 10pm Friday night at for a time-traveling formal evening at the Steampunk Ball! Become part of the living clockwork of Victorian and Victorian-inspired set dances and spin madly with your partner to romantic waltzes and lively polkas. No previous experience is needed; all dances will be taught by dance mistress Susan de Guardiola. Music will be an eclectic mix of modern and nineteenth century. Steampunk, neo-Victorian, or Victorian costume encouraged and admired but not required. Airships and time machines should be parked outside the ballroom. No sabers, ray guns, or clanks permitted on the dance floor.

Playing with Others: Group Costumes
Saturday, 4:00-5:00pm
Susan de Guardiola, Sharon Landrum, Karen Dick, Deb Salisbury
I'm clearly on this one because of last year's worldcon insanity with the giant Interplanet Janet group.  Sharon was one of the movers behind Bucconneer's gigantic Aladdin group.  Karen has a track record dating back to the early 1980s as one of the talents behind such magnificent groups as "Turn of a Friendly Card," "Pyrogenesis," "Blood Rites," "The Court of the Crimson King," and way too many others to count.

The Next Big Thing: What is Steampunk
Sunday, 3:00-4:00pm
Susan de Guardiola, Raven Stern, Ron Robinson, Judy M.
I sincerely hope we're just talking about Steampunk in a costume sense, from the Victorian all the way to the punk (which also covers Goth and tribal, I imagine).

Since I'm never entirely confident about publicity for a Friday night event, I'd be delighted if anyone with a blog or an LJ (especially if you're a member of a Steampunk community) could help spread the word about Friday night's dance.

 Edited 5/23/09 to add:

Well, it's always great fun to find out when you get to a convention that you've been surprise-scheduled for another panel.  I will also be on this one:

Vampires: Why We Love Them
Sunday, 11:00pm-midnight
Susan de Guardiola, Tony Ruggiero, Patrick Thomas, Jonathan Maberry
I trust the title of this one is self-explanatory.  I did volunteer for it, I just didn't realize I'd been scheduled for it.  I do vampire panels because for many years I collected vampire novels extensively and still collect them in a somewhat less obsessive fashion.  I tend to be the person either representing the literature side (if it's all about Buffy and other TV/film stuff) or the non-trendy side (vampire fiction before/other than Anne Rice, Twilight, etc.)

NEFFA 2009 Ramblings

I've been so tired lately that I tried to take it very easy at NEFFA this year.  I was only teaching one session, basic cross-step waltz with Amy Cann and her fellow musicians of Calliope.  It was scheduled first thing Saturday morning, which (not being a morning person), I hate, especially since I was staying a full hour away at my home-away-from-home in Medford.  Next year I need to try being slightly less flexible in my acceptable schedule times.  But the session went well, and once again I had people accosting me in the hallways and even, memorably, from a car in a dark parking lot late at night, to tell me how much they'd enjoyed it.  I could get a seriously swelled head from all the positive feedback I get at dance festivals.  Working with Calliope was great -- being able to pretty much just wave my hand and summon music of the proper style and tempo makes teaching much simpler.

After teaching, I had food and checked in the Spare Parts CDs I'm selling.  Since I wasn't teaching a session relevant to those CDs I'd only brought along a few each of The Regency Ballroom and The Polo.  I didn't expect to sell many, but one can always hope.

Along with attending a few dance sessions, about which more below, I did a little gentle shopping (two very cheap CDs of fiddle music for dancing and a small stuffed sheep), and hung out with various friends -- it was good to see Merav & Mike, Kat/Sor, JB, Joanne, David & Ottavia, Hobbit, David & Persis, Peter, Jeremy & Angela, Pat, Simone, Helen, Kristin, Liefe, Michael, Katy & Ben, Nicole & Brian, Terry, and more others than I can remember off the top of my head.  I even did a little negotiating and more-or-less settled two gigs for the fall.  October's weekends are now completely gone, with three out of four on the road and one at home with the EAS Regency Assembly and multiple houseguests.  Whee!

Flurry Ramblings

Back from the Flurry with a few random thoughts.

The trip up was a mess.  The problem with leaving after work is that while New Haven's rush hour isn't a particular problem heading north, I hit Hartford just at its rush hour.   I spent well over an hour sitting in traffic between Hartford and Springfield (who would have thought that many people commuted across that border?) listening to disco music for my line dance session and doing little finger dances on my leg to train my brain.  Once I got to Springfield the traffic magically cleared up and the rest of the drive was uneventful.  I found my homestay without any problem, and after a few false starts managed to figure out how to get over to the festival site on foot.  This would have been more fun if it hadn't been dark and really cold.  Next time: print a map that shows both homestay site and festival site.

Saratoga was covered in snow, with snow-berms along the roads and sidewalks that were three to five feet tall, and in a few extreme cases taller than me.  I'm impressed with how very well-cleared their roads are.  The sidewalks were more of a mixed bag; most had clearly been well-shoveled, but icemelt had run back onto them later, leaving them extremely slippery in places.  The carousel I rode last June was closed for the season, but the park looked very pretty covered in snow.  I did not need an ATM at any point during the weekend, but if I had, Saratoga was all set to help me find one.

Forth to the Flurry

I'm off to Saratoga Springs (NY) tonight for the fabulous Dance Flurry, at which I'll be teaching a rather bizarrely mismatched set of four workshops: Waltz 101, Cross-step waltz, Chiaranzana (a 16th-century Italian dance), and 1970s disco line dances.  I've spent the last couple of weeks immersed in disco dance manuals and Saturday Night Fever video clips and lots of late 1970s music in preparation for the latter.  I just hope someone comes to that session!

In between, I'm going to try to squeeze in some purely-for-fun dancing of various sorts: ragtime, modern Scottish country dance, modern English country dance, waltz, contra, Lindy, etc.

I've no idea if there's any net access there, so I expect to be offline from tonight until Sunday evening, when I will arrive home pleasantly exhausted, possibly too much so to check email.  But I might trip over some WiFi and end up popping by, so don't plan to wreck the place while I'm gone.  And leave me some weird and wonderful comments to enjoy when I get back!

Turning and turning...

This weekend's schedule:

Friday night: Elm City Waltz.  A bit of teaching but mostly DJing and general hostessing.  I do get some dancing in.

Get up early to drive to Boston with a stop at the office on the way for some catchup work.

Saturday afternoon: Cross-Step Waltz workshop for Mostly Waltz-Boston.  2.5 hours of teaching and DJing practice time.

Saturday night: Swing & Blues evening.  Social dancing among strangers at one of my newer dance forms.

Sunday afternoon: Mostly Waltz.  Live music, social dancing.

Sunday night, energy permitting: Visiting a performance troupe's rehearsal.  May or may not get to actually dance, depending on exactly what they're working on.

Arrive home midnightish.

In between all of this, I hope to get a bit of reading, blogging, writing, and costume work done.

Dance Like Jane Austen!

Well, okay, dance like Jane Austen and her younger cousins, since she died in 1817 and the dances at this event run from the late 18thc up to 1824.

This weekend (10/18-19) is The Elegant Arts Society's Regency Assembly in New Haven, Connecticut.  Saturday is dancing; I'm teaching the afternoon workshop and running the ball (with live music by Spare Parts) in the evening.  Sunday when everyone is physically exhausted is strolling in the park and playing games (whist and picquet for the more alert, spillikins and dominoes for the less so) and drinking tea.  I bring out my actual antiques for the gaming, so the spillikins and dominoes will be carved bone and ebony!  (The cards, however, are reproduction decks.) 

Yummy food both days baked from actual period recipes by our staff of stalwart cooks: rout cakes, syllabub, salamagundy, etc.

I love this event because it's my only chance during the year to put all my obsessive Regency research into actual practice.  I can't go all out on things like steps at conventions where I'm working with fans who are for the most part not regular dancers and where I do not have the core of regulars attending who can dance complex stuff like the Royal Scotch Quadrilles.

So, if anyone reading Rixo is actually in range (besides Raven, who's already coming) and would like to do some spiffy dancing, which I will teach from scratch in the afternoon for beginners, please do come to New Haven this weekend!  All the details and registration information are on the event website; you can still get the pre-reg discount if you register by Friday.  Pretty costumes encouraged but not required!

Dance Sleep Dance Friends Sleep Friends Dance Sleep

"There is a bit of insanity in dancing that does everybody a great deal of good." 
-- Edwin Denby

I don't write much about my day to day life, because generally it's not very interesting.  But I enjoyed a rare perfect trifecta of dancing this past weekend: social dancing, taking class, and teaching.  I don't find this combination very often outside a dance week, and it involved some schlepping around between states to accomplish.  But along with the chance to visit with good friends, this combination makes pretty much my ideal weekend.  So, for once, Rixo presents: This Is Susan's Life!

Hoppin' in New Hampshire

I'm going to be offline for a few days while I'm learning new dance moves at Swing Out New Hampshire.  This is a Lindy hop dance camp, which is a dance form in which I have only the most modest of skills and a dance community where I will know exactly two people, both instructors who probably aren't going to remember me at all from the class I took from them several years ago.  (Fair enough; I wouldn't remember students under those circumstances either.)  It's a real camp-camp, involving campfires and s'mores and swimming and other traditional activities which do not include blogging.  I'll hope to find lots of comments when I return on Monday!

This is a boundary-pushing trip for me, since I'm terrifically shy among large groups of strangers and since, sadly, I'm out of practice at going to dance events where I'm a beginner and a stranger.  I was so nervous about signing up for it that I decided it was a Hangup and therefore should be attacked head-on.  I expect it will be good for me, and I'm hoping it will be fun as well.  At the very least, my Lindy skills should improve exponentially with four days of immersion.  I'm hoping to pick up a little bit of Balboa as well and to make some new dance friends, ideally ones that have interests that extend beyond Lindy, or could be lured into such.

It's very weird to keep having to come up with something to do over Labor Day weekend after having it dedicated to worldcon for most of the past quarter-century.

Dance Geeks at Play

I was up in Saratoga Springs (NY) this weekend, attending the Society of Dance History Scholars conference at Skidmore College.  Academic conferences sometimes make me wonder if I actually want to get a doctorate.  I can't easily rattle off phrases like "to mediate the intermediality" and "the intersectionality of the intersection" (honest-to-ghod quotes from an actual session) and I'm not sure I want to develop the habit of doing so!  It's all quite different from the other sort of event I'm used to attending that features panel-shaped presentations (science fiction conventions) and even felt quite different from the other two academic conferences I've attended, Kalamazoo and the Dolmetsch conference in England.  I'm sure there were just as many jargon-laden academics at Kalamazoo, but the two times I've attended I've hooked up with other social dance scholars and we've had a grand old time.  And Dolmetsch, of course, is full of social dance historians with whom I instantly have common ground.  SDHS is a bit different: most of the presentations focused on 20th- and 21st-century dance, and most of them focused on meta-analysis rather than on the dances themselves.  There was surprisingly little social/vernacular dance (and what there was leaned toward the not-dead-white-European).

The campus was beautiful, but isolated from the actual downtown in a way that would have made me nervous as a student; I like cities.  I did remember my digital camera, but I didn't feel like taking pictures of pretty campus landscaping or stately Victorian homes in Saratoga, But with my usual evil appreciation for kitsch, the sculpture above left, located at Skidmore, caught my eye.  Yes, that's a giant sculpture of a shopping bag, not an actual shopping bag (click the thumbnails in this post for full-size photos).  The little black thing in the corner is my laptop bag doubling as a size reference, since no one happened to be passing by to conveniently pose next to it.  This makes me think less "art!" and more "some artists have way too much time on their hands!"

Balticon 42 Program Schedule

Please say hi if you're going to be at Balticon this weekend!  I'll be around mostly on Saturday and Sunday.  My program schedule consists of two costume panels and a Regency ball:

Costuming for Regency Events and Naomi Novik's Temeraire Universe
(Ladies)
Saturday, 2:00-3:00pm
Susan de Guardiola, Mary Alice Ladd, Keira Sokolowski
Fashion information for the ladies of Naomi Novik's novels or for the Regency dancer/reenactor.  Fashion plates, changes during the early 19th century, recommended patterns and resources, underwear, and accessories for the complete lady of the Napoleonic era.  Information for both the beginner and the experienced costumer.

Costuming for Regency Events and Naomi Novik's Temeraire Universe
(Gentlemen)
Saturday, 3:00-4:00pm
Susan de Guardiola, Marc Hartstein, Jeff Poretsky
Fashion information for the gentlemen (and the female aviators) of Naomi Novik's novels or the Regency dancer/reenactor.  Fashion plates, style notes, recommended patterns and resources, and hands-on lessons on how to tie a cravat in several early 19th-century styles!

and, now that you know what to wear:

Your Attendance is Requested for
The Dover & Trafalgar Ball
Sunday, 1:00-3:00pm, Garden Room
Aviators, naval officers, and all the best of society are invited to celebrate two great victories over Napoleon in Naomi Novik's Temeraire universe with lively early 19th century country dancing led by Susan de Guardiola, assisted by members of The Elegant Arts Society.  Period costume is encouraged and admired, but not required.  (Female dragon captains may wish to wear dresses, to preserve the secret of their presence in the Corps.)  All dragons are requested to remain outside the ballroom!

We'll be doing historical figures of the 1800-1810 era (that's pre-waltz, pre-quadrille), but not historical steps unless you want to!

Gal in Kalamazoo

I will be in Kalamazoo, Michigan, Friday and Saturday this week for the International Congress on Medieval Studies, where I'm presenting a particularly geeky paper looking at gender differences in Italian Renaissance dance on Saturday afternoon.  Yes, I know that Renaissance != medieval, but Kalamazoo's definition of medieval is sufficiently elastic to cover Shakespeare and Spenser, not to mention Tolkien, so a little Caroso won't hurt them.

I know my friends Kathleen and Tracie are coming, since we're all doing the same session.  Anyone else?

NEFFA Ramblings

I went up to the New England Folk Festival (NEFFA) last weekend for about 24 hours to do some teaching and dancing.  I was sick all last week, so I was much more sedate than I normally would be at a Festival, dancing very little and saving all my energy for my two teaching sessions.  A few thoughts: