‘Tis the season for college orientations, many of which have a square dancing evening. I didn’t know colleges still did that (it was my first exposure to square dancing, back at Pomona College in 1966…didn’t take then), but according to various Live Journal entries, it’s still alive and well.
At any rate, here are some very scary pictures of one such event: girlziplocked: Square Dancing: I document your humilation. Amazing what a weird camera can do…
John Perry Barlow organized sporadic dancing around New York City during the RNC. Here’s his report on the first day: BarlowFriendz: Dancarchy Reigns! A quote:
We just had another brilliant expedition into elephant country. We encountered many of our quarry , converted a few, and made the rest so nervous you would have thought their thin smiles might shatter their faces. One of them said that he knew we were mocking George Bush. “How are we doing that?” we asked. “By dancing,” he snarled.
Another quote from a participant:
My favorite reported quote came from the Bush supporter who called one of our ACLU-member dancers a “free-speech Nazi.” Now really, where does parody go from there?
Back in the late ’90’s, some dancers had a cool idea: why not use video and audio internet feeds to let dancers from all over the world have a dance at the same time to the same callers. World Square Dance 2000 was born. The idea:
Since square dancing is a world-wide activity and technology has advanced to the point that it is possible to communicate to the world , it would be of great benefit to square dancing and the world as a whole to perform a world-wide square dance. A world-wide square dance would help unite the activity as well as advance peace and understanding among the peoples of the world. The basic concept would be to have a group of square dance callers perform live over the internet to all the square dancers in the world. It would be an eight hour-long dance. This would be a non-profit venture.
At the time, the group decided that the technology wasn’t there yet, and the event was postponed indefinitely. Now there’s some action; the committee has sent out a survey asking clubs around the world if they could and would participate.
Our local square dance facility, the Albuquerque Square Dance Center doesn’t have broadband access, but we do have a phone line, so we could go for an audio-only link.
I think it’s a cool idea (but then, I’m a techno-freak anyway). Not only would it be fun, but it would also be the kind of thing that could be used to get square dancing in the news.
To keep up with what’s going on, check the website: World Square Dance 2000
For the past few months, I’ve been collecting LiveJournal (and other) personal blog entries relating to both square dancing and contra dancing. I’ve been meaning to organize , collate, compare, contrast, etc., but haven’t gotten around to it. So I just made a couple of HTML pages out of the raw entries. You can see them here. Click on the cover to see the first page (Square Dancing); cllick up in the corner of the page to see the second page (Contra Dancing). BTW, these pages are large; give ’em some time to download.
Now here’s an idea: a square dance club, the Flushing Roadrunners, has a blog: Blogger: User Profile: Flushing Roadrunners Square Dance Club. I couldn’t find an indication on who’s writing it; seems to be mostly little news snippets.
This seems like a good thing: it’s a way for club members to keep up with what’s going on (the club could do this with an email list also)
, and it makes the club’s activities visible to anyone who happens to be looking (like a website, but much easier to update on a regular basis).
I hope they keep it up.
This is the best kind of dancimg there is. Completely unlike other stupid kinds of square dancing.
Oh , Glencoe! West Mabou!I do like the way it’s completely impossible to know what’s going on from those instructions unless you already know what’s going on.
From Caile’s LiveJournal.
She’s right; here’s the first part of the square dance:
First Figure (Jig)
1. All join hands forward and back or do the Mabou Shuffle.
2. Dance with your corner partner.
You´ve just finished the first quarter of the figure.
3. All join hands forward and back or do the Mabou Shuffle.
4. Dance with your corner partner.
You´ve just finished the second quarter of the figure.
5. All join hands forward and back or do the Mabou Shuffle.
6. Dance with your corner partner.
You´ve just finished the third quarter of the figure.
7. All join hands forward and back or do the Mabou Shuffle.
8. Dance with your corner partner.
You´ve just finished the fourth quarter of the figure.
9. All join hands forward and back or do the Mabou Shuffle
– that´ll be it – that´ll be all!
Meandering train of thought…
When I was at the Nationals in Denver, I did a little shopping (it was hard to avoid the vendors; one had to walk through them to get to various places…each time, I seemed to past this one sequined vest that sort of called out to me, so I bought it on the last day). As part of my shopping transaction, I received a catalog from Petticoat Junction. Today, I found the catalog as I was going through “stuff” and glanced through it. Among all the petticoats and pettipants and peasant blouses, there was a picture of a shirt with a red, white, and blue (I assume, since the catalog is black and white) stars and stripes logo and the phrase “United We Dance”.
This brought up my continuing musings, as we head into the election season, on the polarization of the country between “red” and “blue” cultures (see this Washington Post series on the two cultures; you might need to register). Seems to me that square dancing (except for gay/lesbian square dancing) is red, and contra/traditional dancing (at least the Modern Urban style that I’m most familiar with) is blue. When I go to a square dance, I’m very careful to avoid political conversation; I can almost guarantee I don’t agree with most of the people there (the most shocking moment was when I was in a square, the Abu Ghraib atrocities came up and a woman I know argued that they were justified!!). On the other hand, at a contra dance, I feel like I’m in a group where most of the people share my values and political beliefs.
This may be why there are the so-called “Contralab” contra dances (with recorded music and dress codes)…this provides the “reds” with contra dancing opportunities. And why there’s a growing group of straight couples who attend the IAGSDC conventions and dance at local gay clubs; as “blues”, they can square dance with more culturally similar people. It may also be why the ARTS organization, an umbrella organization of “the diverse groups making up the ‘greater’ American Folk Dance community” including the American Callers Association, CALLERLAB, CONTRALAB, International Association of Gay Square Dance Clubs, National Square Dance Campers Association, National Executive Committee, ROUNDALAB, Singles Square Dancers USA, Universal Round Dance Council, United Square Dancers of America and, USA West Policy Board, has no connection (as far as I can tell) with contra/traditional folk dance organizations, like, for example, the Country Dance and Song Society.
At any rate, I can’t imagine going to a contra dance and seeing a “United We Dance” red, white, and blue logo.
I googled “United We Dance” and found a few interesting things. The vast majority of the hits are links to this flash animation of Britney Spears and George W. Bush dancing in front of a flag: United We Dance – Miniclip.com However, I also found a page about the Australian GLBTIQ Multicultural Conference event featuring dancing from many different ethnic cultures represented in the GLBTIQ community: United We Dance. And there was also a reference to an Atlanta dance event to raise money for the disaster relief efforsts of the Red Cross: United We Dance.
Here’s a Christian Science Monitor article that’s the start of a series on the red/blue division: Inside red-and-blue America
The 1990s also seemed to take the cultural divide beyond policy into the broader realm of lifestyle and taste. Today
, pundits routinely boil down red vs. blue to things like: barbecue vs. sushi; pickups vs. hybrids; country vs. hip-hop; church vs. spirituality. As John White, a political scientist at Catholic University, puts it: “We live in two parallel universes.”
The square dancing tractors resurfaced in American Profile magazine (you know, one of those free supplement magazines that show up with the daily paper): American Profile: 6/27/2004 – 7/3/2004: Dancing In The Streets.
The Farmall Promenade home page is here: FARMALL PROMENADE – SQUARE DANCING TRACTORS. Be sure to check it out; there’s a snippet of the video (not good sound syncing
, however; what they’re doing doesn’t look anything like what the caller’s calling).
Now that I think about it, choreography for tractors might be useful as choreography for dancers in wheelchairs…
I’m still collecting blog snippets that mention square dancing (and contra dancing, but square dancing is much more of a cultural icon, so it gets used in contexts outside of “I went to the contra dance last night…”). This leads me to some pretty weird stuff, like this porn story featuring square dancing: Hoedown
Warning: this link really does contain lesbian porn. It’s fairly light-hearted, but it is explicit. It also features the caller in a dominant role, with the dancers as submissives.
It’s the whole context that I found interesting. Here’s the inro (no porn here):
I’ve never been much on modern square dancing. It’s all slick and commercial , the caller ends up sounding like some silly kid who writes bad lyrics. In fact, other than a few basic instructions, it’s choreographed, and everyone just learns the steps. Once you learn it, it’s just the same thing over and over.
That’s why our club decided to go traditional. In a traditional square dance, the caller is the final authority. You have to learn the way the caller thinks, learn to communicate… because the caller can tell you to do anything, and it’s what you have to do. That’s where a square dancing club really takes on a challenge. And since we wanted to compete at a national level, we decided we should really go for it. Our only change from the old days is that we allowed women to call dances, too.
Modern is repetitive and traditional is made up? Competition on a national level? Like I said, weird! (BTW, so you don’t have to follow the link to see what happens, Mistress Rochelle comes to call a dance, gets all the men to go away, and calls the women into an orgy. There’s no clever use of real square dance calls…just a peripheral dosado and promenade.)