Ecstasy, Flow, and Dancing

Can one find ecstasy of the kind referred to by Donna Hébert in Ecstasy and the Contradance at a modern western square dance? We don’t have live music, so we don’t get the interaction of musicians and dancers that permeates Hébert’s article, but then we have callers who are making up figures based on dancer reactions, so we have a different feedback system…not between musicians and dancers, but between caller and dancers.

---

An interesting exchange between an old-time square dance afficianado and a contra fan:

Phil Jamison – Dare To Be Square! and Robert Reed’s Response to Phil Jamison

This is a good discussion of contras vs. squares (not MWSD, however).

Another interesting pair of articles:

Contra Dancing and the Consumer Mentality and Consumer Mentality – a reply

The relevance to MWSD? Our club organization, which in many parts of the country is having problems because of burnout. Also, it’s relevant to the growing movement towards caller-run clubs. These clubs are likely to be run with a profit motive or the caller will ultimately burn-out.

---

Square Dancers are once again trying to get Square Dance declared the “National Folk Dance” for the whole United States. Some folks seem to think that this would magically solve all of our ills and make square dancing popular again. Let’s get real. And if it didn’t happen in the ’70’s and ’80’s, why should it happen now, when square dancing is less and less representative of American culture? Here’s a thread from rec.folk-dancing on the subject: National Folk Dance Conspiracy!!!

---

So, just in case you don’t get to see your “favorite” ad often enough on TV, you can go to The Ad Critic – All Ads, All The Time. and see it again and again. I thought, with a name like Ad Critic, it might be like Adbusters Culture Jammers Headquarters and actually critique the ads (I wanted to see what’s so funny about the “whazzzup” ads; I guess I’m out of the loop because I just don’t get it). But no, the site just has Quicktime copies of popular ads.