English Country Dancing the Night Away

I'm finally getting to post about the English Country Dance I attended last Monday at St. Mark's church in Pikesville, Maryland.

Some things I should tell you up front:

1) I was really worried about screwing up and I did - many, many times, but all was well and it didn't matter.

2) Wear flat, well-soled shoes - meaning they have some texture to them so you don't slide.

3) Don't eat for several hours before. It's quite a workout and, if you are nauseated by exercising in a hot room (and, therefore, you abhor 'hot yoga' as I do), that might be the case for you at a dance like this.

4) There was no Mr. Darcy at my dance, but you could get luckier!

I drove over with my friend and fellow brave soul, Shara,and we were both pretty nervous. Perhaps it was perfomance anxiety or just that neither one of us had set out to learn something new and so wholly foreign to us in a very long time. Maybe ever.

The setting was charming, an old stone church with archways and stone paths and lots of greenery, still dripping with rain from an earlier shower. We were warmly received and introduced around, and the caller gave us a brief lesson on some of the steps.

(Note here: fortunately, another friend and accomplished country dancer, Barbara M. gave us a nearly two hour lesson two days before, which helped tremendously. Had we not had that, it would have been harder. What I'd love to find and what I think is needed, is a real class. An hour or so for several weeks where you can learn with other newbies and move slowly through the dances, stopping to make corrections and redoing parts of it over several times. The more complicated parts. I'm also all for just being thrown into the pool, but I wouldn't say that what I learned stayed with me as it was in the moment, by following my partner and the other dancers and so didn't make a lasting impression. I would have dearly loved to learn and retain as I went, rather than grasp things quickly out of a survival instinct! It's a blur in that case, so we're going as many times as we can for the next few months. It's something I'd like to keep up with.)

That said, everyone was fantastic. They were happy to have us there and there was no shortage of kind and patient gentlemen asking us to dance and guiding us expertly through, explaining steps whenever possible. You are to look your partner and the other dancers in the eye the entire time, which was a little disconcerting and meant that Shara and I grinned giddily most of the time. It felt strangely intimate. The oddest part was to lock eyes with those who were deadly serious and showed no humor on their face at all. Fortunately, these were few. Most smiled back and this practice helps the other dancers guide you through the dance and creates a warm connection and festive air.

The caller walked us through the dance once or twice, and some of them were new, even to those dancers that attend every week - apparently they have a book of 300. And then we were off and I quickly learned you have to just go with it and not think too much about the next step. The good news is you do the same series of steps as you move down the set (the line of couples facing each other), so after the first few stumbles, you get the hang of it.

The problem for me was when I reached the end of the set with my partner and then had to move back up. Those moving up and those moving down each have some differences to the steps and you are, in some places, reversing what you did going down the set. So here’s where I often got lost and it took me longer to get the hang of the return back to the top of the set.

After two dances I won’t lie, I was absolutely pouring with sweat. The church wasn’t air conditioned and, though it was cool outside, it got very warm, very quickly, inside. I can't imagine dancing in the layers and the corset of the Regency period. Talk about unromantic! I was going to rest because I was starting to get information overload, but someone else asked me to dance and I couldn’t say no. It was on this third dance that I completely lost the thread and was eventually just following what people were telling me as the dance progressed. I retained parts of it, but other parts not.

I will say, that once or twice, as we were learning the dance, my partner missed part of the instruction and so I missed it too as a result. While he was able to correct himself quickly, I was not, being too new to know when and how to compensate. So, that third dance was the low point for me and I just prayed for it to end quickly so I could get some water and some air! I can see now why so many women fainted, having to wear those corsets and with so many people surely making the room very close. I didn’t have the luxury of being able to swoon, a fan, or Colonel Brandon to half-carry me out of the room!

The floor got slippery on my side of the room, whether from the sweat of the dancers or from the drinking of water, which was nearby and perhaps was spilled. So I was also trying not to wipe out!

I was able to sit out the fourth dance and just watch and it was a gorgeous dance with several sets of six couples and lots of complicated (at least to me) exchanges and crossovers and turns. They were all so graceful and skilled; it was a joy to watch. I hope someday to be that good.

Shara and I danced one last dance (separately – we often did not encounter each other during the dance – at one point there were two sets and she was in the other one), whose name I can’t remember (in fact, the only one I remember was the first one – The Major; I’ll try to do better), but in that dance things finally started coming together for me. I don’t know whether it was simpler or I was getting the hang of it, but I was so connected to the dance that what came next was more instinctual for me than about having learned it, and I was able to guide some members of the set who turned the wrong way or hesitated. That was very satisfying.

 

Here are some links to the host of the dance I went to, the Baltimore Folk Music Society and the Country Dance and Song Society, which show some of the figures and have definitions of them and videos as well.

  

So, should you try it? I give you an unequivocal and resounding yes! It was so much fun and challenging and we were pretty darn proud of ourselves for making it through. We have plans to go again tomorrow night (Monday), as we were given a free pass, which was a nice gesture. (The dance costs $10 for non-members.)

I hope you give it a try. Leave me a comment here if you do. Or if you are someone who attends these dances, leave some tips!

 

Comments

[Barbara]

When I first started dancing, I was a total klutz, being new to any kind of dance and completely unathletic. I made a deal with myself then: try it for one year and if I still felt that I couldn't get it, then I could quit. However, long before the year was up, I knew I'd keep at it no matter what, because I was so in love with dancing, with feeling the music in my body, with forging wordless connections through touch and eye contact.

My tips are: relax and keep your eye on your partner who will help you through the dance. The live music is often quite lovely in its own right, so come and listen even if you don't think you want to dance. Some of the musicians who play for the Baltimore dance on Mondays are moonlighting BSO musicians.