Square Dancing Fool
Sometimes just noodling around with google gives interesting results. I googled “square dancing fool” and found:
- A stock market article: Square Dancing! (Rule Breaker) May 3, 1999, which contains this call: “Swing yer stocks round and round, sell the nets and buy the Dows!”
- An article (Deciding to Choose Happiness) about why a self-acknowledged “dancing fool” doesn’t like square dancing and does like contra dancing. Here’s why he doesn’t like squares:
I sensed I did not like squares — but I didn’t know why I didn’t like squares. I listened to others talk, and suddenly something someone said to me long ago became, now, my answer: “I don’t like to be told what to do.” That’s it. In a square, you are at the mercy of the caller — who calls whatever he chooses to call, and you cannot concentrate on dancing, on music. You must listen to a voice that is often so garbled, you don’t know what has been said. Of course I am stating a personal preference. I have had others tell me that what they like about squares is that hesitation — that not knowing, until you are told, what it is you will do. They see the challenge; I see the control.
And why he does like contras:
Contras move toward a Silent Dance: you don’t have to listen to anyone else, and you don’t have to listen to yourself. You can lose yourself in the music; the moves are on automatic pilot.
- A collection of posts to rec.folk-dancing on how contra dancing got its name: A Fool’s History of How Contra Dancing Got Its Name. Mantra dancing? Contrail dancing? Revolutionaries?
Some years ago, a young man in Boston told me:”I tried clubstyle square dancing for a while, but found it too staid.”
About getting dizzy with a 12-count-swing followed by a circle left, he said: “In any case it’s cheaper than alcohol and drugs, and probably it’s more healthful.”
I can see how square dancing could be considered staid, especially given the demographics of the vast majority of the current dancers. But there’s nothing staid about the dance form itself…an off-the-wall caller with some energized dancers (like Mike DeSisto in an IAGSDC convention MS hall) can make the hall rock! There’s amazing synergy between the dancers and callers. In contra dancing, you can get the same synergy between the dancers and the band.