(no subject)

[rivka]

This afternoon, as we've done a couple of times before, we went to a family dance sponsored by the Baltimore Folk Music Society.

The way they've set these up, there's a family dance from 5-6:30pm, then a potluck, and then American folk dancing (contra and square) for adults. Both groups share a caller and dance band. Um, supposedly. This time, the band was very very late - they still hadn't arrived by the time that we left, when the family dance was nearly over - and so the caller had to accompany himself on guitar or fiddle. It's a testament to his considerable skill that this worked at all; in fact, it worked very well.

The family dances seem to follow a particular rhythm: they start out with simple folk dances and dancing games for the first half, and then in the second half there's more of a skill-building focus. The second half of tonight's dance was an introduction to square dancing, leading up to a fairly complicated square dance. ("Duck for the Oyster," if you follow these things.)

Alex was the youngest walker there. (telerib and moeticae had Baby Spud in a sling.) For the first two dances, she was my shadow - we held hands and participated as if we were one dancer. (That's what the youngest children usually do, so that they don't have to change partners away from a parent.) After that, she rode on a hip. She did amazingly well when she danced - she did a rough approximation of the steps, kept her focus on the dance, and showed great stamina. And she danced with such joy. She just grinned from ear to ear. Her clear favorite was the Kinderpolka - she even asked me to "sing it" on the way home, which seemed to mean talking out the steps. My favorite was Sasha, a wildly popular (in folk dancing circles), raucous pseudo-Russian dance that the caller couldn't resist putting in when he realized he had not one, but two different Alexandras at the dance.

The other Alexandra is someone I've seen at English Country Dances since she was about four years old and riding on her father's shoulders. She's now nine or ten and has become an accomplished dancer - when we did a cakewalk at the end to win a free pass to next month's dance, she spontaneously did an impressive set of clogging steps. It was cool to see.

I'd like to get more closely involved in the Folk Music Society again myself, and I'd like us to do the family dances more regularly. I had been thinking that we were in an awkward time for that, with Alex too big to be carried and too little to dance herself. But she did great. And it seems like such a wonderful first structured physical activity: it's fun, it builds strength and coordination, it has the potential to be a lifelong hobby, it brings you into a supportive intergenerational community, and there's absolutely none of the competitive or figure-conscious baggage that comes with more traditional activities like team sports and classical dance. And oh, did she ever love it.

Comments

[abbylee]

That sounds wonderful. You're making me want to see if there's anything similar I could involve myself in, even just for a night, in my city. I'm always up for finding a new way to be active without "working out" or "exercising", even if the sweat level ends up being the same :D

[rivka.livejournal.com]

Not sure where you are, but if you're in the U.S., the Country Dance and Song Society has listings (http://www.cdss.org/grp_addr_list.html) for local dance groups.

[hobbitbabe.livejournal.com]

Oh, that sounds like fun!

[saoba.livejournal.com]

Yay for dancing with children!

The son of a friend of mine was wild about dancing from the time he was a babe in arms.

One night at an SCA event she took him off to put him to bed. About twenty minutes later he tugged at my skirt and put up his hands to be picked up.

'Artos, where is your mama?'

'She sleepin' now. Dance me?'

At nine years he was taking an SCA dance class. The instructor was giving the steps of the next dance before walking us through it.

Instructor: And then it's step, step, reverance, step-

Artos: No. That's not right. You missed a double.

Instructor: No, I'm sure-

Artos: It's a double there.

Instructor moves away, listens to the music on the tape deck for a moment, counting under his breath.

Instructor: Yes, thank you. Good catch there. Folks, Artos is right.

One dance ends with the gentleman down on one knee, with his partner seated on his lap. For years Artos was so small that his partners had to reverse it and the ladies would kneel. I was there the first time he was tall enough (and aware enough) to check his partner's spin and drop to one knee like the rest of the gentlemen.

His partner for that dance, his mother, didn't know whether to laugh or cry. I think she ended up doing both.

I think that having something like dance, that you guys can share as a family and continue over time, is a superfantastic idea.

[geminigirl]

I can understand his mother not knowing what to do but I'm sitting here in the middle of the night getting kicked by my own and blubbering.

I think the family dance sounds fabulous, and I really hope that we can find similar activities around here. I was waxing nostalgic today about going to Barefoot Boogie in NYC with friends, including their infant when I was living up there, and I'm looking forward to going to Baby Loves Disco when my own baby is here.

[zingerella.livejournal.com]

I'm so glad that Alex and you had fun. It makes me sad that there are very few children in my local dance community—the kids I know who have grown up social dancing are all wonderful dancers and great people, and if I ever get to sprogging, I'd like to be able to share dancing with my kid.

[rivka.livejournal.com]

I think the Baltimore dance community has really worked to make it happen. Besides these monthly family dances, they also have two weekend dance camps that are held in a state park and are intergenerational in the truest sense of the word - not "oriented towards people with young kids," but "welcoming of all ages, including young kids." The Folk Music Society also hosts storytelling events, at which they advertise their dances.

I'm glad they've put this much effort into it, because I think that otherwise the natural tendency of folk dance communities is to get older and older.

[zingerella.livejournal.com]

I was one of the youngest people in my local contra dance scene for 10 years. Finally, some second-generation dancers have starting coming out of their own accord, and bringing friends, which makes me happy. But we're not a very family-friendly place, alas, and that makes me sad. I'd love for Captain Mushroom to feel that he can come and bring the Wee Mushroom Lad, but as the dances are, the WML wouldn't find much there to engage with. So good for your local community for finding a way to create family-friendly spaces.

Have to see what we can do about mine. It's entirely possible that there are other opportunities of which I'm just unaware, what with not having kids and all.

[mjlayman.livejournal.com]

In my family, dancing was a sin, but I always found places to dance. When I taught myself at home, there was always time for dancing to records.