Have you ever been accused of dancing too much? Before I started calling, I was dancing three or four times a week (more if I could). If you too are dancing a lot (and find your relatives, friends, and neighbors looking askance), here’s a list of reasons: The Top Five Really Good Reasons for Dancing Too Much

Dancing and competition

I ran across this quote on a footbag (hacky sack) site:

In January of 1993 I became a contra dance fanatic: one of my main atractions to contra is its cooperative spirit. It’s one of those rare activities, like footbag, where the objective is to create fun through cooperation.

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I delved into this site, Footbag Peace Initiative, a litte further and found this:

Today, we kickers prize footbag as a highly athletic and cooperative dance form and a complete aerobic workout, comparable to a martial art. Since the early 80’s a small but growing group of sack enthusiasts have also developed a lively society of competitive footbag.

What struck me about this was that the author, who is clearly a peace and love kind of guy, is accepting of both competitive and non-competitive play. And I wonder why square dancers, in general, are so adament about resisting any efforts to add a competitive aspect to square dancing.

Depending on the kind of competition, I think it’d be fun. I personally wouldn’t care for ballroom dance style competition, where squares would work out a choreographed routine and practice the hell out of it, with emphasis on costumery and styling. The practice would bore me to death. But I think it’d be fun to try to dance as long as possible to a caller trying to be tricky. The practices would be fun and the competition would be nerve-wracking, but also fun.

Square dance competition is successful for teen dancers in the Northwest. Information on the teen festival can be found here: Teen Zone

Competition brings visibility and (shudder) commercial sponsorship. There’s competition in ballroom dancing (they even call it DanceSport), country-western dancing and swing dancing. There’s no competition, that I know of, in contra dancing and international folk dancing.