Glorious Contra Dance. Glorious.

[unzeugmatic]

At the LCFD dance camp last weekend in western Massachusetts I had more fun dancing contra than it might be possible to convey to people who have never experienced that particular level of contradance joy. I had more fun dancing contra than I've had since my first year of contradancing (and really the only year I did much contra dance at all, in

Comments

[pinkfish]

I would be interested to know what you think is the reason for why you don't have as much fun at a MN dance as you did at camp - you gave lots of reasons why this was so exciting, but what are the things that are lacking at home? In my recollection (from decades ago), there are a lot of strong dancers where you are. And your caller at this camp was even from there at one point (maybe still?) And you mention that the gender-free aspect isn't as big a deal for you as it once was. So - why isn't it as much fun at home?

[unzeugmatic]

Dean: My first draft of this was intended to conclude with this -- I had a paragraph at the beginning about a talk I had with Carol on Sunday morning about this very thing, leading into the description of what I saw last weekend. And then I decided that was a separate essay, and originally wrote a final paragraph saying "and in our next entry...". But I decided to leave this cleanly about this weekend and leave that as another issue to write about later. Which I will.

But the subtext obviously remained.

[anonymous]

I'm definitely going to tune in for the next installment!

[bearfuz]

Yay!!! Just -- YAY!!! And now, even without any details, I feel as if I've had the vicarious experience of being there. I'm so glad you were able to go! Yay!!

[rsc]

And many of us eagerly await the day when your insane travel schedule doesn't conflict with camp!

[bearfuz]

Me too, Robert!!!

[lucy_the_uni]

This is lovely, thought-provoking and well written (as are so many of your posts, Steven--it's just that I'm rarely in enough of a procrastinating mood to get around to making a comment).

An aside--is this by any chance Aaron Marcus? If so, [warning: extremely-small-world moment] he and I attended the same Unitarian church growing up.

[unzeugmatic]

Yup, that Aaron. Can't you just hear him saying, "Oh good, I *love* English!"

He's a riot -- when he is on the side during a contra and not actually dancing the dance he continues to dance -- usually African dance, combined with flatfoot stepping. He does this wild movement stuff, yet he claims he stopped Morris dancing because of what it does to your body.

His mother is now dancing with Muddy River.

[bearfuz]

Steven, we're all big fans of Aaron - and, actually, his whole family. I love seeing Peggy at events; she's a wonderful and willing contra partner whenever we run into each other (at, say, Flurry or wherever) and it's been wonderful in the last few years watching their family band take off and thrive.