Social circle of dancers extending past dance time, after dance hangouts,
making friends.
On Sep 23, 2013 6:07 PM, "Mark Stowe" <mkstowe...@gmail.com> wrote:

> Research suggests that we humans are happiest when we are succeeding at
> something that we can just barely accomplish.  I have been contradancing
> for 38 years and I keep inventing and learning new flourishes, dips/ swing
> move interjections, putting in extra spins, running between lines and
> conspiring with fellow dancers to alter order and gender and create new
> interactions with defacto trail buddies that 'weren't in the dance'.  The
> only limit to challenging yourself is not straying into being late and
> staying within the bounds of what your particular fellow dancer will enjoy
> which means that there is constant strategic intellectual exercise as well.
>  The happiness of contradancers is infective and the inclusiveness is
> inspiring.
>
> As a biologist I believe (with all due modesty and suspicion of teleology)
> that life evolved for  ~4 billion years on earth precisely so that there
> could be contradancing :).
>
>
> On Mon, Sep 23, 2013 at 4:51 PM, Sam Whited <s...@samwhited.com> wrote:
>
> > On 09/23/2013 06:12 AM, Jeanette Mill wrote:
> > > Simply answer the question - what made you addicted to contra?
> >
> > When I first started, it was probably the fact that I couldn't stop
> > smiling the entire time I was dancing (or for several hours afterwards).
> > I was terrible, kept breaking the line, didn't understand half the
> > caller's instructions, etc. but I still couldn't stop smiling.
> >
> > It might also be the fact that I `just got' the swing (even if I didn't
> > get most of the other moves). People asked me how long I'd been dancing,
> > and told me what a great swing I had even though I'd never actually been
> > to a dance before; it was nice to know that contra was actually simple
> > enough that all I had to do was walk around someone and they'd think I
> > was relatively good at it unlike, say, Swing dancing (my other favorite
> > form of dance) which took me days and days to even get the basic down.
> > I've seen this in a lot of other new dancers since then; I ask them how
> > long they've been dancing only to find that this is their first time and
> > they `just get' what I now know as the concept of `giving weight'.
> >
> > After I had danced for a while and branched out into other kinds of
> > dancing, I realized that I also liked contra because no one takes it too
> > seriously (well, a few people I know do, but I make a point of not
> > dancing with them). You can cock about, experiment, break half the line,
> > or just make something up and as long as you can run back and swing your
> > partner when the caller says too it will all be okay and you'll have a
> > good time (I know a lot of people will disagree with that one; but it's
> > one of the things that makes me love contra, so there you are).
> >
> > I also love the fact that you sweat a lot. I tried ECD a couple of
> > times, and while I enjoyed the people, and thought a lot of the dances
> > were really interesting, I couldn't help but wonder why I'd want to do
> > something that didn't leave me sweaty and breathless afterwards. Lots of
> > people I know love that sort of thing, but it wasn't for me. It felt too
> > `delicate' (there are also lots of other issues that made me not
> > especially love ECD, but they're rather offtopic).
> >
> > Contra is like driving a Pagani Zonda that's thinking of new and
> > interesting ways of killing you every 5 seconds, and some other forms of
> > dance are like driving an old VW Bug: they don't go above 50 MPH, have
> > the engine on the wrong end of the car, and were conceived by Hitler
> > (that analogy made more sense in my head before I started typing it
> > out...).
> >
> > —Sam
> >
> > --
> > Sam Whited
> > pub 4096R/EC2C9934
> > https://samwhited.com/contact
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> >
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