Tonight I attended my first Gaskell's Ball. The ball is named for Elizabeth Gaskell, a novelist writing a bit later than Jane Austen such that the industrial revolution was in full swing and factories and workers rights were the ignored topics at the balls instead of Napoleon.
The costume span at the ball started with a spattering of Renaissance costume, picked up steam around the Regency Era and peaked across the American Civil War and English Victorian Eras, tapering off to include some twenties and thirties finery and then going wide to embrace modern formal wear. I, and the whole of my party, fell into the last category except perhaps Tim who actually had a top hat.
I learned a number of things at this ball:
Dancing for hours is hard hard work.
I am out of shape.
Waltzes are scary.
Polkas are scarier.
Mazurkas are scarier still.
Gallops, in contrast, are surprisingly fun and easy to pick up.
A schottische is great fun and while if you're anything like me, you're likely to mess it up regularly, it doesn't really matter and you're unlikely to crash into anyone as long as you try to keep going around the circle and hopping periodically. (Step, step, step, hop. Step, hop, step, hop, step, hop, step, hop.)
Staring soulfully into your partner's eyes during a waltz is not as practical nor as lovely as the novels would have you think. It is a great way to get very dizzy very quickly. "Spotting," as they called it--the art of picking a spot in the direction you are headed and watching it as you turn--is much more practical. Indeed it was the very best thing I learned from the quick and dirty dance lesson at the start. I certainly didn't learn the actual steps to waltzing.
I still maintain that set dances are easier than ballroom dancing. That one I knew already. We danced a slightly strange version of Strip the Willow--sets of about eight that ended up half way in between set-type Strip the Willow as the Scots would do it (as best as I can remember), and an Arcadian Strip the Willow. They danced it at a very survivable pace too which is less frenetic but I can't really mourn since it also left me with fewer bruises. There was another set dance I learned there and then and danced twice in the evening that was also good fun.
The Congress of Vienna seems like it would be great fun. It was certainly beautiful watching it the first time. By the second time Manda had taught us the steps, more or less, and so we hazarded the dance the second time they played it, with mixed success. It is something in between set dancing and more free form dancing. Everyone does the same thing, and you shift through the different sections of the dance, but everyone is dancing around the ballroom in couples, more as you would with a waltz or schottische or the like.
Anyway, it was grand fun and I got to wear one of my fancy dresses I never have occasion to wear. Actually I wore two in a row. Last night we went out to a fancy restaurant and I wore, wait for it, one of my prom dresses. That was very funny. And it was a very lovely night out. It was all very formal and they handed the ladies long stem roses as we left the restaurant. Not my usual world, but a fun one to visit once in a while. That's been true of the whole weekend I suppose.
Monday will be back to the normal round of babysitting and job hunting. And we're starting up a new chore rota too--at least we have a very colorful and artistic chart to go with it. I hope it helps.
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3 comments:
I've heard good things about Gaskell's before; still sounds like fun. Alas, I never heard when it was on during the three years I lived in the area, so never went.
Dancing for hours regularly will solve the part about being out of shape. :-)
I found the waltz to be scary when I went to the Deco Afternoon a few years ago. We were in middle of the outer ring and almost got run over.
This time, I think I had it figured out. I was telling Tim that waltzing must have been an imprinting technique for use in arranging marriages. At first the girl in question finds her beau "eh", but after a few hours of waltzing, where his face is static but the rest of the world spins, and where he is literally holding her up, she finds that she is very dizzy and he is the new center of her universe.
BTW, There's such a thing as "friday night waltz" which is, apparently every Friday, in Palo Alto, halfway between Red House and San Francisco. (Actually not at all but not so long a drive as all the way to Los Gatos.)
If you feel inclined to escape the world more often.
Actually someone at Gaskells was telling us that Friday Night Waltz was now on Saturdays...but still called Friday Night Waltz. But I think that one was in Berkley because we were joking about "only in Berkley" would that name scheme still work.
And yes, full agreement on the dizzy. Although, like I said, I was less dizzy when I looked out then when I stared at my partner's face.
I wouldn't mind getting in shape by dancing regularly, but I would have to work out transportation to a place of danciness. There is a Saturday night dance thing near us in Los Gatos that's only $5 a lesson, though it's modern dancing not the old school stuff they do at Gaskell's.
Still, I figure it will help with the coordination and the fitness level, and help Ron and I learn to dance together as partners (I know all that stuff they say about changing partners often, but my main goal is to dance with Ron well, so I don't really care if I'm an inferior dancer with the rest of the world).
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