Over a year ago, I wrote about Henry Morgenstein, a contra dancer and caller who had written a bunch of essays on contra dancing. Well, he’s still writing; there are new essays on his site. I particularly enjoyed Analysis of a bad contra and Great Callers – How They Prepare.

I also enjoyed reading one of his older essays, in which he talks about how English contra dancers like complicated, intricate contras, while American contra dancers like lots of swinging. In it, he says something relevant to the difference between MWSD and (American) contras:

If you always went to a dance with your partner (wife) and almost always danced with just one other person, what is the point of intense eye contact, of dances with long swings, of dances that are repeated & repeated & repeated?

Since you go with the same person each time, and dance with the same person all night long, your interest is in the dance: the moves, the progression, the structure. Once you’ve mastered that dance, it is time for another dance.

If, as is the case in the U.S., every dance is with a different partner, you want dances that contain eye contact, long swings, and you want the dances to last for a long time.

Thanks again to Clark Baker for this one.

A German square dance group received a request from some people in Nigeria, asking for help in getting a visa so they could attend a Challenge square dance weekend. Here’s a copy of some email coming from the Nigerians.

And here’s an Alta Vista Babelfish translation of the German on the page (showing the difficulties with machine language translation):

Concerns: Attempted fraud/with intent ton deceive? Surely everyone of you has already at least mail notorious “Nigeria Connection” gotten siehe http://home.rica.net/alphae/419coal/ With always new stories is tried to use and to draw to them with the prospect on much money only once the own from the bag the greed of other humans. Now one wants apparent by the promise to visit an international meeting arrive at a German visa. After our knowledge there are in Nigeria no Square Dance, already no in the C-programs – or someone somewhat of it heard? Please a copy sends it to webmaster@eaasdc.de if similar post office gets.

And here’s my favorite part: a history of square dancing in Nigeria. This link displays an image file (probably a scan of the original). Here’s the text:

Square Dance was first introduced in Nigeria the then Bendel State of Nigeria by the Britons and the Portuguese who settled after the Independence in Nigeria. Although it was introduced along with Round Dance but very few persons took it seriously as it was a Dance cut out for the elite and basically the African man is concerned about our own local tradition way of dancing.

In 1990, November 17th, the 1st body to co-ordinate Square Dance and Round Dance was established and was headed by Mr. Wayne Daniels. The organisation under Mr. Wayne introduced Square Association to so many schools in Nigeria after which private clubs and Associations were established.

Most recently in 2000 a body to organize and co-ordinate Square Dance and Round Dance in Nigeria at the Obafemi Awolowo University IIe- Ife, Osun State was established. It saw dance clubs joining the Association known now as the Nigeria Association of Square and Round Dance.

The body was established to organize and co-ordinate the activities of Square and Round Dance in Nigeria. To choose cloths and colours to suit the Dance and sponsor and community.

Square Dancing in Nigeria is also a participant activity that is beneficial and fun. We enjoy fun and friendship set to music. Square dancing to us is movement to music. We do it in couples, with teams of four couples. We also relate it to little exercise of the body, mind and spirit as we believe it is for the active heart and mind.

Most Square dance clubs in Nigeria are established by ready-made groups of friends. It also has greatly giving us in Nigeria the opportunity to meet with new friends and establish each other as there is no better way for active, contemporary people to meet each other and build a circle of friends.

With Nigeria as a multi ethnic and multi religious country with diverse culture, Square dancing has changed the orientation of most of us as we see all kinds of folks sharing a love of action and teamwork.. You see Square dancers who are Governors, presidents, secretaries, lawyers, machinists, farmers, corporals, ministers, colonels, doctors, nurses etc, whatever you think of. While dancing or when together, they forget tribes, tradition, customs and discuss square dancing.

Pretty impressive, especially the fact that they want to send C3A dancers to Germany. And it’s also interesting the way they weave various phrases taken from square dancing websites to create a history. (But then, I recently received email from Uday (or was it Qusay) Hussein’s Nigerian wife; I didn’t read the text, so I don’t know what kind of deal she was offering me.

Here’s a very nice article on gay square dancing in general and the Times Squares in particular. It includes quotes from Betsy Gotta and various Times Squares members.

Maybe Times Squares is recruiting successfully, and can still honestly say that gay square dancing is not experiencing the decline seen in straight square dancing, I have to say that here in Albuquerque, the Wilde Bunch is having problems getting a class going.

The whole Weekly World News article is even funnier than Clark’s quotes from yesterday imply. And, in context (the cover story is “Saddam and Osama Adopt Shaved Ape Baby”), it’s even more absurd. I especially like the part about a new cabinet position, the “Secretary of Calling,” with Bill Clinton as a proposed nominee.

My friend Clark Baker posted the following to the sd-callers email list:

Page 31 of the November 4, 2003 issue of Weekly World News has an article with the headline: Bush to enforce mandatory square dancing law!

In addition to the text, and a picture of Bush, it contains a picture of some people square dancing (wearing SD outfits) with the caption “MOST people outside Texas don’t know a “chasse” from “circle left” — but by the end of January, everyone will be an expert”

It also contains the following great line: Dance “callers” are now being trained at secret locations around the nation, ready for the government-funded square dance blitz due to hit thousands of communities in all 50 states on January 1.

While I am not a regular reader of WWN, I was able to find my copy at the checkout counter of my local grocery store. It has a B&W cover with the following in small type across the very top: Bush To Make Square Dancing Compulsory For All Americans.

Expect your January classes to be much larger than usual.

You may or may not have noticed that SquareZ was inaccessible for a while last week. Believe it or not, SquareZ was the victim of a terrorist attack. Not the target, mind you (a square dance blog as a threat to terrorists?), just a peripheral casualty. My webhost, Hosting Matters, hosted an anti-terrorist site, and was shut down by a denial-of-service attack.

Here are some links about it:

• Newsday.com – Terror Link to Mass ‘Blog’ Outage
• Winds of Change.NET: Blog Wars: Who’s Behind the Attacks?
• Winds of Change.NET: Special Report: Cyber-Attack on Warbloggers
• Haganah B’Internet : : Internet Haganah: a mirror of the site that triggered the DOS attack

I make a real effort not to be political here; after all, square dancing is a pretty apolitical activity. However, one can’t escape its effects.

You’ll want to check out Cal’s website; not only does he have a new edition of Dancing for Busy People, but he’s also added more dances.

I’m on several email lists related to square dancing. Recently, one group has been outstanding in terms of discussion about important issues like complexity and dance evolution. That group is trad-dance-callers. The list started several years ago (the earliest posts I have saved are from August 1998), and recently switched from a private host to yahoogroups, which resulted in a resurgence of activity. As Ridge Kennedy says, the original purpose was to serve as a place to meet for traditional and modern square dance callers:

The original trad-sd list was created specifically to encourage the sharing of dances and traditions and information and history and other good stuff, whatever it might be, and to serve as a bridge across a perceived divide
between the “Traditional” dance community and the “Modern Western” dance community.

At any rate, the discussion has been great recently. If you have an interest in our roots and in successful dance programs that don’t involve a ton of complexity, this is the list to be on. And let the people who get bent out of shape every time someone mentions contra on the sd-callers list keep to that list.

Recently mentioned on trad-dance-callers, two articles about complexity and the problems with the direction that MWSD took:

• David Millstone – Complex Dances
• Chip Hendrickson – Keeping Those Traditional Roots

From Kennamatic – One chromosome more and I’d be a potato…:

Despite my many mentions of how appalingly bad my academic record was at school I do actually have a degree. It is however with The British Association of American Square Dance Clubs. You get it once you have mastered the first 75 moves of square dancing which include such manouvers as Curly Q and Spin Chain the Gears.

I got involved when I was in my teens. It was one of my friends who heard about it and we decided to go along, a group of about six of us. Following the success of The Goodies single “Stuff That Gibbon”, we referred to the entire pastime as Gibbon Stuffing. Two of us, and a third to a certain extent, got quite into it. We’d travel from our own club out to some of the neighbouring ones and also had two big jaunts, one to RAF Mildenhall where American servicemen held a massive dance and the other over at the Supreme Headquarters, Allied Powers Europe in Belgium.

One of 10 rules for running the Boston Marathon (in Will’s blog : essays/marathon.html):

Rule 9: Don’t square dance. If you’re going to think good hoe-down songs, don’t start square dancing. It’ll affect your time… a lot.