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+ View Older Messages

Re: Define "Social"...
Posted by CliveHarrison
8/3/2008  11:19:00 AM
I like your Zombie analogy - I call ours "the undead"!
Re: Define "Social"...
Posted by Ladydance
8/3/2008  12:30:00 PM
"The undead" I love that...perhaps it is that degree of zombie-ness that makes them back up unexpectedly and go against the LOD.
Re: Define "Social"...
Posted by CliveHarrison
8/3/2008  12:42:00 PM
Yes, sometimes we say "Hello again" because we have lapped them, but more often, they are to be found dancing backwards.
Re: Define "Social"...
Posted by Polished
8/3/2008  3:04:00 PM
A Social Dance is where it is inmpossible to do even the very Basics steps on their correct alignment without having to bend your Feather Step around some couple who have every right to be on the floor even though they haven't a clue of what is required. That's why I would not go to a Social Dance. If you have gone there to practice its an absolute waste of time. Do it enough times and it will ruin your dancing. Latin is a little different. If it was a Social Latin night it would be possible to claim your space and go for it .
Nobody has mentioned a Social Teaching Class where Footwork Sway and so on doesn't even get a mention. The teacher teaches a heel lead, but its only a Social Class so why bother to mention that to plant the ball of the foot on the floor isn't the way to go. I hate that excuse for poor teaching. Its only a Social Class.
Re: Define "Social"...
Posted by DivaGinger
8/3/2008  6:38:00 PM
I've also learned that the people who complain the most about a social dance (the irregular music, the contra-LOD couples, the icky floor, the inability to ask EVERYBODY to clear off the floor so THEY can do THEIR awesomeness)... are actually the ones who able to enjoy *any* dancing the least due to their own inadequacies. Blame it on everyone else- the band, the other people, whatever... never "well, if I'd danced IN this situation more often, it wouldn't feel so uncomfortable and foreign", or "if I'd practiced heel-leading, I'd have some semblence of muscle memory for it now, and I wouldn't have to worry about it AND the granny with gold shoes and purple hair spinning right for us" (have you noticed that some of 'em do jitterbug, or what they call JB to *everything*?)

If dancing was choregraphed to the tee in every situation, it wouldn't be dancing, it'd be a drill, not a dance. Do you *like* doing the exact same thing over and over again? That's another thing- a lot of places teach "steps" the way we learn singular "words", and never teach people how to either take them OUT of the routine used as a sentence, or put back INTO a routine to complete a thought.

Just because Polished gets nothing out of going to a particular dance doesn't mean that the rest of us can't deduce something entirely different. Even if you *don't* dance at a social, you can still sit and watch find things you need to work on. Granted, it's not very much fun to go to a dance and not dance... then it'd be called a "sit". It's so sad to see something like that keep you from the floor though. All those dance opportunities gone.

There are very few things you can do to "ruin" your dancing. That rings familiar of people who don't deign to dance with beginners, because they might "pick up bad habits"- when actually, I've learned that it can also be the other way around sometimes, too. I'm wondering how long it'd take someone like Erminio Stefano to be "ruined" if he started dancing socially...

And define "ruined dancing" anyways. If it's just social, there aren't any adjudicators present to gauge what you've ruined and what you haven't. Dancing *is* as much a spectator event as a participant event, though, but if the object of social dancing ISN'T about pleasing an audience... ?

Part of what makes a good dancer- competitive *or* social- is the ability to adapt to a situation at hand with as much suavete as possible. If it means going from Slowfox to Argentine Nightclub(colloquialism) after the Dance of the Living Dead has begun, so be it?

*snicker* Geez, don't they teach that to competitors? Best not dance with any of them- might pick me up some bad habits
Re: Define "Social"...
Posted by anymouse
8/3/2008  9:08:00 PM
"A Social Dance is where it is inmpossible to do even the very Basics steps on their correct alignment without having to bend your Feather Step around some couple who have every right to be on the floor even though they haven't a clue of what is required."

Not always.

This can be a problem, but it is not a constant one all evening at all venues. It may take some time and some frustration, but its worth discovering the socials that you can actually dance at.

"If you have gone there to practice its an absolute waste of time."

A social is not about practicing, it is about using what you have learned in your training, practices, and even competitions, to finally just dance for the enjoyment of it. Everyone who would call themselves a dancer needs to do this from time to time. Otherwise you are merely a student, competitor, teacher, performer - but not actually quite a dancer.
Re: Define "Social"...
Posted by Polished
8/3/2008  10:54:00 PM
If you want to get yourself disliked just fly around dodging and glaring at a Social Dance. I know a person who was politely told that they were no longer welcome at this weekly dance. A few people had compained that they thought at times he was going to plough into them.
Re: Define "Social"...
Posted by DivaGinger
8/3/2008  11:56:00 PM
... Who 'flies around dodging and glaring', much less *said* anything about something that maniacal?

Are you *sure* you're thinking of dancing, not Quidditch?

Only a most un-Polished dancer would try to play bumper-cars with the unwilling.

There was likely another reason or so that your Capital Letters Social Dance Guy got asked not to return.

You can't get kicked out just for looking and swooping- even The Law agrees that until a crime has actually been committed, there's nothing they'll do. Maybe he actually *DID* plow someone.

There's a big guy here that rams people by going contra LOD all the time and nobody does or says anything to him except with the occasional elbow. It's just part of dancing- and I've seen worse on comp floors willfully wrought upon one another in various forms.

It doesn't matter how many rhinestones you're wearing- you can still be a douche with bad floorcraft while social dancers can dance circles around you.

If you want to control the setting, build a "dancing room" in your house and put "NO BAD DANSURZ ALOWD" on it, have a password (Joe sent us!), and play only strict-tempo Marilyn Hotchkiss-style music.

Holy- I think I just described a studio in my area... I better get out the kevlar...Eh, at least anymouse got what I was trying to say :)
Re: Define "Social"...
Posted by Ladydance
8/4/2008  9:42:00 AM
We go to a 'social' dance every Friday and deal with all the problems that have been mentioned. As DivaGinger says, "you can't control the setting" and I wouldn't want to dance all by ourselves in dance room. However, I don't think a few ignorant couples should be allowed to ruin the experience for everyone else. I will tell a couple going against the LOD, that they are and hope they correct their ways. Once the man just said 'thank you' to me and continued the quickstep for the whole dance going the wrong way. I don't think these people are social dancers...there is nothing social about them. No awareness, no etiquette, just a selfish disdain for the feelings of others (to paraphrase Jane Austen.) I think they believe everyone is watching them because we think they are such great dancers when in reality we watch out for them because they are wackos on the dance floor.
Re: Define "Social"...
Posted by CliveHarrison
8/4/2008  10:14:00 AM
One of the "rules" of floorcraft, that I was taught very early on, on the social floor, was always to dance into a corner (and NEVER across it), and then to come straight out of it again on the new LOD. It is amazing how many times you see the rule broken by people who should know better.

Worse, are the dancers (although they are "borrowing" the title, and aren't entitled to it in their own right) who actually CAN'T start anywhere, except at the start of a "side" of a floor, and who will stand there - on the exit line from a corner - while waiting for their partner to join them, or waiting for the start of a new eight bar phrase (this being bar two), and who are completely oblivious of the chaos they cause.

Give me very old people shuffling about ANYTIME - I can just dance around them - not by altering the standard alignment of figures such that I would do violence to the integrity of an amalgamation, but by chosing suitable figures to get around them in the first place, and expecting my partner (who can't see where we are going) to follow me through the gaps.

Social dancing is both good fun, and hard work. Most competitive dancers (ie the overwhelming majority, that don't win or get placed) wouldn't last five minutes, or be able to take any pleasure from the process, because they have forgotten (or never knew) what dancing is actually FOR.

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