Experienced Dance Disappointment

Subtitle: A Whine and a Rant  Read at your own risk.

Experienced Dance in Rehoboth:  The calling by Lisa Greenleaf was superb, the dances were unusual, intricate and fun (I loved the double progression dances) and I was blown away by Perpetual e-Motion.  They rocked.  And yet, I felt shortchanged.  I must be getting crotchety; perhaps I need a break from dancing if this attitude persists...

We had the usual influx of new dancers that show up at any experienced dance.  There were the few who didn't know it was experienced and probably a few that figured "how hard can it be?"   No doubt I was much the same at my first challenging dance.  But even when the dance requirements were announced, people (including some "experienced")  lined up to dance that clearly didn't know what to do.  Yeah.  I know.  That's par for the course.  Unfortunately, the instructions to at least keep moving or get out of the way and come back to swing your partner at the appropriate time fell on deaf ears.

Because despite the warnings to keep moving, I bumped into more than one person standing stock still in the middle of the line.  Dead stop.  And people constantly going the wrong direction.  And people consistently progressing late.  And witnessed a few poor dancers get thrown into flourishes when they were struggling just to keep moving in the right direction.  My partner and I were ejected from our contra dance line twice in one dance because of a woeful combination of inexperienced dancers and experienced dancers that were either overwhelmed or not paying attention.  If it had been just one dance, I'd had shrugged it off as a fluke.  But this?  At Rehoboth?  At an experienced dance?  I must have done something bad to attract that much negative karma because Facebook was full of raves about Friday's dance.  Instead of immersing myself in the rhythm of the music and the pattern of a dance I spent too much of the evening keeping myself in line, compensating for the confusion and ensuring I got to my partner on time.  Made me grouchy.  Its a bad attitude to have at a dance.

I wasn't looking for perfection.  Goodness knows I can rattle off several of my own dancing faux pas from Friday night.  Half of contra dancing is about recovering from the mistakes.  I normally can laugh at all of it.  I guess I'm just disappointed that after all the anticipation for this dance - I didn't walk away with the high I had hoped for.  Bummer.

On a more positive note:  Wow! Rehoboth women are a flirty bunch.  I danced the guy's role in a dance where the woman did a hook maneuver and the men had to follow.  My goodness, gals!  I'd have followed you anywhere.  You made me smile.  I also had some amazing dances with some really delightful partners.  Thank you; you saved me from being a total grump.  I appreciate that!