Cinderella at the Ball

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.

Bedlam and Gaming and More Goodbyes

Last night was awesome fun. Three floors of party just for us! Ok, so most of the people there didn't know it was just for us...but who asked them? What's that you say? GUGathons and Bedlam both happen quite regularly? I don't know what you mean.

In case you were wondering, GUGathons are a period of all night gaming in the QM. Technically it only just ended half an hour ago, at noon, but most of the hard core people go home around 7-9am I understand. It's been an age since I lasted nearly that long, so I wouldn't know. However we did make it to the lock-in stage where no one else could come into the QM anymore (3am, we left at 3:30). Neither of us found a role playing game to join in (there being only 3 and 2 of those already filled when we got there) but that was just as well in this case because it meant we could chat and say our goodbyes and whatnot around board games. And it gave me the freedom to head down to Bedlam.

Bedlam is something the QM's been doing for years once a month on a Saturday, though I didn't know about it till a couple years ago. The first floor gets turned into a clubbing atmosphere--not unusual--and the choice of music is goth, industrial and alternative (with a spattering of other loud, hard subgenres). It's awesome! I've never known that music scene (or any music scene) well. One of my 22-yr-old friends was complaining that she was getting old, the music not making sense any more! Well, it's never been a clear picture to me, but however the bands and subgenres and the rest have changed in the eight years since my first exposure (I think we were talking alternative and metal then? And punk perhaps?). So it didn't bother me in the least that there were only two songs the whole night I could lip sync all the lyrics too and one of those a heavier rock cover of "Sweet Dreams."

The other song I could sing along to was a Rammstein song. It was a little surreal dancing for the first time to something that I wrote much of my master's thesis to. I'd chosen Rammstein for writing music because it was high-energy but the lyrics are all in German so I wasn't particularly tempted to think about the lyrics instead of what I was supposed to be writing. But when you listed to something that many times, you're bound to learn the lyrics even if they're in German. Just don't ask what they mean. No really, trust me on this one.

Back to the topic of covers, I think a hard rock/metal/whatever cover of Bedlam Boys would be hysterical and awesome and would get played at every Bedlam. So, any takers?