Contrary at contra dancing

[celticdragonfly]

Last night selenite and I actually had a babysitter! So we went out on date. We went contra dancing with friends.

The being out with Karl part was lovely. Being with friends was fun. The actual contra dance - not so much.

Sigh. It comes down to it, it can't be denied - I'm a perfectionist. This is no surprise to anyone who knows me. I'd proabably be all sorts of more contented if I was the type of person who could just say "Oh, it doesn't matter, I'm just going to have fun!" But I'm not. There's the phrase "does not suffer fools gladly" - I do not suffer incompetence gladly. It *does* matter.

The caller - well, we've had him before, I think he's a nice guy, but his communication skills are lacking. Figuring out what he means can be rather difficult. He'll get numbers messed up - tell us allemand left 3/4 where it's really more like 1/2. Or one dance last night, there was a part where it was "gentlemen allemand right 1 1/2" - and a lot of the time he'd call it as "allemand right 1/2". Big difference! (especially considering I've been told he's a math teacher) And I feel awful letting it bother me - after all, the guy's presumably a volunteer - but gah, one should succeed in dance partially because of the caller, not in spite of him.

The music - last time it was much better, fiddle and bass and more, bouncy and good. This time - piano and a drum set, the latter alternating with flute. And ... it was not bouncy. It was slow and ponderous and Thumpa Thumpa Thumpa Thumpa. It sounded and felt like what you'd expect for kindergardeners to be taught to. The tempo was too slow. I did ask after the first couple of dances to have a quicker tempo - because it wasn't just me, others were saying it was too slow. It may sound wrong, but it's harder to dance to slower music. Contra should be a matter of forward momentum, inertia and trading weight, and when it's too slow you keep losing the momentum, and having to put more energy in. And it was depressing, too. I feel like I shouldn't mind - it's not like I could play contra music. But I did mind.

And gah, I got so frustrated by dancers who didn't know what they were doing. Better music would have helped them, and more clear calling. But gah. They did a "mixer" dance that was starting with lines of three, and then trading at various points - not that hard a dance, really. But it was a total and complete cluster$^#&. So many people just did not get it, that no, you weren't dancing as a couple, or as a man in a man's part or woman in a woman's part, just dancing the pattern by the spot in the line. It was awful awful awful, made me want to quit.

I'm sure there are people out there who would tell me "oh, it doesn't matter". It *does* matter. When it's good dance with good music, fun patterns flashing through and the momentum, it does wonderful things to me, makes me feel so good. When it's done poorly, it's uncomfortable and distressing.

I kept trying to get into it and enjoy it, but didn't. We left before the last dance and went out for a snack. That was fun.

Comments

[joyeuse13.livejournal.com]

What it comes down to is this: I hate to see done poorly what I do well. And I can call dances well. (I've only called contra once, but I taught SCA dance for years, and it's quite similar--I'm GOOD at getting new people through the dances.)

As for the music: well, I can't play contra music myself, largely bc so much of it is improved around a basic repertoire of melody lines, and I can't improv. But I also spent years in an SCA dance band where we had a fixed repertoire, so I do know how to play dance music. And again...I know how to do it well, so hearing it done poorly drives me batty.

And yeah, if those two things are done well, suddenly the dancing improves vastly. The newcomers get it more quickly, and the experienced dancers aren't thrown off. So I feel your pain. Bad calling makes me want to drop out of the line too.

[filkerdave.livejournal.com]

And gah, I got so frustrated by dancers who didn't know what they were doing.

As someone who doesn't contradance, but has been a newbie at other things -- how are you supposed to learn w/o taking part? I'm not convinced that better music would help, necessarily. More clear calling, perhaps.

[celticdragonfly.livejournal.com]

Oh yes, they should learn by taking part. I may wish they'd pay more attention, but really it's just me at the worst of my perfectionism being annoyed by it. Better music does help, really. And more clear calling helps a LOT.

I think last night boiled down to: bad music, bad dancers, bad calling - I can put up with 2 out of 3, but not all 3.

[carbonelle.livejournal.com]

It's a kindness to newbies to acknowledge same and include that understanding in events: This usually includes breaking the dance into parts, playing sections of the music, having people practice following through in chunks...then putting it all together in the reel thing.

:-)

[celticdragonfly.livejournal.com]

Oh, they were doing walk throughs before each dance[1]. Not with music, but walking through it several times. And they were teaching new dancers at the beginning, and doing simpler dances early on and more complex ones later.


[1] The last dance was a called dance. We didn't do it this time - I was too fed up - but I did it last time, with the better music, and had a GREAT time doing that. It was called only, no walk through, and changed to different dances I think 4 times.

[filkferengi]

The saying hereabouts is that I don't suffer fools at all, let alone gladly, so I get where you're coming from. My thing is square dancing, rather than contra, but it's the same principle.

We all had square-dancing in high school, and I've always liked it. When we were first dating, the older singles had a square dance, and we went to it. They had the explanatory walk-through at the beginning, and it was pretty simple--nothing more complicated than a right-and-left grand [which, since you're just alternating hands and walking around in a circle, is pretty easy]. Unfortunately for us, we wound up in the Alzheimer's set, with everyone wandering all around the room. I'm sure they were lovely people, but the set we were in just didn't get it.

Truth be told, neither did my date, but I wound up marrying him anyway. Some folks just have affinities for different dances. The man does a lovely [simplified] tango, but square dancing Just Ain't His Thang.

You're not alone in the perfectionism.