(no subject)
At dinner on Sunday, it somehow came up that I enjoyed washing dishes as a child. And because I was dancing 17 of the past 48 hours, with 3 hours dedicated to calling & choreography, dance was even more on my mind than usual. I compared it to a balance & swing, and everyone laughed and said I was crazy. Because I'd only had 12 hours of sleep in that 48 hours, I couldn't articulate what I meant. Even people who claimed to see how it made sense, didn't really get it. This morning, I realized my mistake was being in a room with people who weren't choreographers.
It's still not a perfect analogy, but few are. For anyone tuning in late, I'm the second oldest of 6 kids. For a large portion of my younger years, I also had 2 foster siblings with autism. Our house was usually pretty happening. Even now, I sometimes have trouble concentrating on things without something in the background to tune out. When I did the dishes (no dish washer mind you, uphill both ways and the whole bit) everyone else was off in other corners of the house, and I could turn on my music and just take my time. Washing dishes doesn't require a lot of thought or physical exertion. I could take a deep breath and not worry about what came before or after and just be in the moment.
From a dance writing standpoint, a balance and swing can serve the same purpose. How many times, have you been dancing a complicated dance and heard the caller say out over the crowd: "balance & swing your partner. Wherever you are, find your partner, swing, just swing. Swing now." For both the caller & the dancers, it's 16 counts of music where they don't have to worry. Even if you screwed up the 48 counts between your last swing & now, you now have a lot of time to breathe, collect yourself and get ready to try it again. If you were behind, you have plenty of time to catch up. If you were on-time, you still get a nice stretch of time to recenter and get ready for whatever weird formation your Physicist or Geologist or Computer Science choreographer planned for you.
So, there.
It's still not a perfect analogy, but few are. For anyone tuning in late, I'm the second oldest of 6 kids. For a large portion of my younger years, I also had 2 foster siblings with autism. Our house was usually pretty happening. Even now, I sometimes have trouble concentrating on things without something in the background to tune out. When I did the dishes (no dish washer mind you, uphill both ways and the whole bit) everyone else was off in other corners of the house, and I could turn on my music and just take my time. Washing dishes doesn't require a lot of thought or physical exertion. I could take a deep breath and not worry about what came before or after and just be in the moment.
From a dance writing standpoint, a balance and swing can serve the same purpose. How many times, have you been dancing a complicated dance and heard the caller say out over the crowd: "balance & swing your partner. Wherever you are, find your partner, swing, just swing. Swing now." For both the caller & the dancers, it's 16 counts of music where they don't have to worry. Even if you screwed up the 48 counts between your last swing & now, you now have a lot of time to breathe, collect yourself and get ready to try it again. If you were behind, you have plenty of time to catch up. If you were on-time, you still get a nice stretch of time to recenter and get ready for whatever weird formation your Physicist or Geologist or Computer Science choreographer planned for you.
So, there.