a really fun Höstdansen!
This weekend we were at an SCA event held in an old village school house not far south of the city of Umeå. It was ever so much fun, and reminds me why, even though I now have many other hobbies to fill in the time between SCA events within a reasonable commute, the SCA really is the hobby of my heart. Höstdansen (The Autumn Dance) is a delightful event, that I have enjoyed every time I have attended (I missed one since moving to Sweden, nearly 4 years ago, the year it had last minute scheduling issues and got moved to the same weekend as the Frostheim Fencing Weekend, at which I had already promised to teach dancing). However, I think this year was even more fun than the other years.
We had a surprisingly balanced group--for all of the day time classes we had the same number of men as women dancing. It was not until the dance set after the feast that we started getting pairs of women dancing with one another as a few of the men were no longer feeling well. We ran one set of dance classes in the morning, with Dis and I taking calling dances from Arbeau to everyone, and then for the next set we split into two groups--she took the beginners downstairs to work with some Playford dances, and she left me the experienced dancers upstairs, where we did lots of Playford dances--just doing the ones we alrady knew, and I introduced them to some of the more complicated ones that they haven't done before, and I hadn't done since moving to Sweden because we hadn't had enough dancers (we had eight, including me, in our group).
In the afternoon we reviewed the morning's dances and tossed in Black Alaman and Saltero as well. And, of course, after the first course of the Banquet in the evening we did more dancing, during which we had live music for a while, before we ran out of songs he knew and we switched back to playing stuff from my phone. (I love today's world--it is lovely to have so much dance music with me at all times, ready to play at a moment's notice. However, Dis and I agree we should set a date to get together, consolidate our music libraries, listen to all of the different versions of the various dances we have and decide which ones we like best and label them, so that when we actually want to dance we don't have to play all four versions of a song before deciding which one we want to use. Pity we didn't think of this while they were still living in Luleå. Oh well, it will give us an excuse to visit Umeå (like we need one, given how many of our close friends live there), or them an excuse to visit Luleå.)
After the second course of the banquet a bunch of us started singing, and I wound up staying up hours later than I would other wise have because it was so much fun. There were a few people who have been in the SCA nearly as long as I have, and they knew songs I haven't heard in years, so we mixed in a fair few SCA traditional songs in English to the standard SCA Swedish song collection. So much fun!
We had a surprisingly balanced group--for all of the day time classes we had the same number of men as women dancing. It was not until the dance set after the feast that we started getting pairs of women dancing with one another as a few of the men were no longer feeling well. We ran one set of dance classes in the morning, with Dis and I taking calling dances from Arbeau to everyone, and then for the next set we split into two groups--she took the beginners downstairs to work with some Playford dances, and she left me the experienced dancers upstairs, where we did lots of Playford dances--just doing the ones we alrady knew, and I introduced them to some of the more complicated ones that they haven't done before, and I hadn't done since moving to Sweden because we hadn't had enough dancers (we had eight, including me, in our group).
In the afternoon we reviewed the morning's dances and tossed in Black Alaman and Saltero as well. And, of course, after the first course of the Banquet in the evening we did more dancing, during which we had live music for a while, before we ran out of songs he knew and we switched back to playing stuff from my phone. (I love today's world--it is lovely to have so much dance music with me at all times, ready to play at a moment's notice. However, Dis and I agree we should set a date to get together, consolidate our music libraries, listen to all of the different versions of the various dances we have and decide which ones we like best and label them, so that when we actually want to dance we don't have to play all four versions of a song before deciding which one we want to use. Pity we didn't think of this while they were still living in Luleå. Oh well, it will give us an excuse to visit Umeå (like we need one, given how many of our close friends live there), or them an excuse to visit Luleå.)
After the second course of the banquet a bunch of us started singing, and I wound up staying up hours later than I would other wise have because it was so much fun. There were a few people who have been in the SCA nearly as long as I have, and they knew songs I haven't heard in years, so we mixed in a fair few SCA traditional songs in English to the standard SCA Swedish song collection. So much fun!