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APRIL POSTING MEME: square dancing
I suck. I suck so bad that I still have topics from December when here it is the last couple days of March. (Yes, I know what my subject line says.)
I am setting aside![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
thelinesoflearning's request for "ramble about Leah Far-Sighted" until such a time as I am working on Leah Far-Sighted again. I'm also, with apologies to melannen, skipping "Cabbages and kings!" altogether—it's a bit late to help melannen's reading page light up with simultaneous Alice references, anyway. Which brings me to anaraine's request: "Square dancing! (Maybe your favorite one? I only have the vaguest ideas about square dancing, so I'm not sure what kinds of questions I should be asking, but I'm curious!)"
I really miss square dancing. I have not managed to get to a single dance since Pepper Steppers folded last year. But Mom and Dad have plans of instituting—we call it Garage Gang; it's something thought up by one of the local callers, in which several of us congregated in his garage every month initially to get somebody's spouse up to speed on I forget if it was Plus or Advanced level dancing, but then it turned into more social hour than dance lessons. Anyway, Mom and Dad are planning to shift Garage Gang to our garage, for reasons including advancing me from Plus level to Advanced level. Which naturally involves lots of me dancing, woot. I'm not so enthusiastic about the social hour part of the program, though.
My favorite square dance call is the Teacup Chain. It's one of the complicated ones and I blow it half the time, but (provided nobody blows it) it's one of the best for show dances. We've got our square of four couples, and the Head ladies go to the center of the square, join right hands, and walk around each other till they reach their corners, while the Side ladies go around the edge to their corners. Then it's the Side ladies' turn to go to the center, join hands, and walk around each other till they reach their original opposites, while the Head ladies go around the edge to their original opposites. Head ladies back to the center and around to the guy they haven't seen yet, and Sides around the edge to ditto, and then Side ladies back to the center and everybody goes Home. The guys just stand there and push the ladies in the right direction. Unsurprisingly, when a caller puts people half-sashayed or arky (that is, with guys on the right instead of ladies) and calls Teacup Chain, or Beer Mug Chain (because gender essentialism, that's why, though I think Beer Mug Chain may actually be a distinct thing in that it starts with quote-on-quote normal couples instead of arky couples; it's not an official call), everybody breaks down. Not the guys' fault; it's just that hardly anybody bothers to teach people how to dance from either side of the couple, and the people who learn how anyway are almost invariably of the gender that there's typically a surplus of at dances: the girls. Lots more girls who dance the guy part than the reverse.
My favorite square dance singing call has got to be the squirrel song. Watch the Mississippi Squirrel Revival on Youtube, and then imagine dancing to a fast-paced, somewhat abridged version. To nobody's surprise, I first met the squirrel song in the Chesapeake Bay region, not in Mississippi. (I can't remember if I ever danced in Pascagoula.)
I am setting aside
thelinesoflearning's request for "ramble about Leah Far-Sighted" until such a time as I am working on Leah Far-Sighted again. I'm also, with apologies to melannen, skipping "Cabbages and kings!" altogether—it's a bit late to help melannen's reading page light up with simultaneous Alice references, anyway. Which brings me to anaraine's request: "Square dancing! (Maybe your favorite one? I only have the vaguest ideas about square dancing, so I'm not sure what kinds of questions I should be asking, but I'm curious!)"I really miss square dancing. I have not managed to get to a single dance since Pepper Steppers folded last year. But Mom and Dad have plans of instituting—we call it Garage Gang; it's something thought up by one of the local callers, in which several of us congregated in his garage every month initially to get somebody's spouse up to speed on I forget if it was Plus or Advanced level dancing, but then it turned into more social hour than dance lessons. Anyway, Mom and Dad are planning to shift Garage Gang to our garage, for reasons including advancing me from Plus level to Advanced level. Which naturally involves lots of me dancing, woot. I'm not so enthusiastic about the social hour part of the program, though.
My favorite square dance call is the Teacup Chain. It's one of the complicated ones and I blow it half the time, but (provided nobody blows it) it's one of the best for show dances. We've got our square of four couples, and the Head ladies go to the center of the square, join right hands, and walk around each other till they reach their corners, while the Side ladies go around the edge to their corners. Then it's the Side ladies' turn to go to the center, join hands, and walk around each other till they reach their original opposites, while the Head ladies go around the edge to their original opposites. Head ladies back to the center and around to the guy they haven't seen yet, and Sides around the edge to ditto, and then Side ladies back to the center and everybody goes Home. The guys just stand there and push the ladies in the right direction. Unsurprisingly, when a caller puts people half-sashayed or arky (that is, with guys on the right instead of ladies) and calls Teacup Chain, or Beer Mug Chain (because gender essentialism, that's why, though I think Beer Mug Chain may actually be a distinct thing in that it starts with quote-on-quote normal couples instead of arky couples; it's not an official call), everybody breaks down. Not the guys' fault; it's just that hardly anybody bothers to teach people how to dance from either side of the couple, and the people who learn how anyway are almost invariably of the gender that there's typically a surplus of at dances: the girls. Lots more girls who dance the guy part than the reverse.
My favorite square dance singing call has got to be the squirrel song. Watch the Mississippi Squirrel Revival on Youtube, and then imagine dancing to a fast-paced, somewhat abridged version. To nobody's surprise, I first met the squirrel song in the Chesapeake Bay region, not in Mississippi. (I can't remember if I ever danced in Pascagoula.)