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Apr. 28th, 2025 01:36 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
sorcyressWeird quiet NEFFA. Very low-key. I think I enjoyed myself, but I also did not do a lot that wasn't chatting with people, and I think chatting with people took a lot of dominance over dancing and singing. Sitting in a small group on the bleachers to watch MerryGoRound (with Lisa K*****, Harris, and Emma) felt fun and good, but also emblematic of "should I have been on that dance floor instead?"
So yeah, lots and _lots_ of human connections, which feels lovely. I think one of the inadvertent highlights was this morning when I was slightly bleary and standing in the breakfast line with my book open. I found myself either just in front or just behind my nemesis (Laurie Sheepfucker), who looked at me and said "would you like to get breakfast, sit together, and not talk to each other? It was _great_, we ate while reading our separate books and it was totally lovely.
Other random highlights, unassociated from time:
*Around lunchtime, I wound up outside in a little circle with Myles and Tuesday and newfriend Hannah and their buddy Sophia who I've met once or twice, and Myles asked me about SCD pedagogy, which meant I got to go "LET ME TELL Y'ALL SOME THINGS!" and have a very nice time being excited about teaching Scottish and how to do it well. Had a clarifying moment that someone (me) should explicitly teach (at ESC?) the idea of how to do talk-throughs, in terms of moving your hands or creating your own physical anchor to the dance. Maybe this is going to even result in some kind of talk-through-only dance on one of the nights. :o
(No, I wouldn't do strictly-that, but maybe a "and here's the one where I do the talk-through first, and you think about it, and now try it out as a quick walkthrough".)
*Danced the contra medley today with Tuesday, which was mostly really good, and I felt very smug about being able to not just hold myself through contra corners, but one of the rounds rapid-talk one of the other couples who needed a little help and get them directed where they needed to be going.
*Which does kinda run counter to the _very good_ mini-conversation Magus and I had with Joanna Reiner about good pedagogy and shutting the fuck up on the dance floor, and gods, I would listen to that woman speak about how to call dances for _hours_. I would go to any level class of hers, any time, she might be one of the teachers I admire most in the folk world. But she said something along the lines of "Does this need to be said _by me_" and maybe it's arrogance but in that particular medley, maybe? I'm not gonna get bogged down in it.
*My demo team performance went quite well. There were a couple little bobbles, but not really anything other people would notice. Dancing with Linda was a delight and I'm very glad to have had her as a partner. One of the other dances in our same time-block was a young woman doing dances from Southern India, and she and I had a nice little mutual squee at the end as we were enthusiastic about each others' performances. She had just looked so _happy_ doing her dances, it was cool as hell!
*On Saturday I got to be on a little panel about dance safety, which felt like it went pretty well. Certainly it was nice to build new connections --I had not really met co-panelist Monya before then, and they and I kept touching base the rest of the fest to be friendly, and co-organizer Liz and I knew each other lightly, but also kept seeing each other during the fest and having more opportunities to hang. So it was a useful panel for social reasons, in addition to being a nice chance to have dedicated talking time about safety!
*Lots and lots of people I like, as mentioned, but it's worth mentioning again. Yay!
~Sor
MOOP!
So yeah, lots and _lots_ of human connections, which feels lovely. I think one of the inadvertent highlights was this morning when I was slightly bleary and standing in the breakfast line with my book open. I found myself either just in front or just behind my nemesis (Laurie Sheepfucker), who looked at me and said "would you like to get breakfast, sit together, and not talk to each other? It was _great_, we ate while reading our separate books and it was totally lovely.
Other random highlights, unassociated from time:
*Around lunchtime, I wound up outside in a little circle with Myles and Tuesday and newfriend Hannah and their buddy Sophia who I've met once or twice, and Myles asked me about SCD pedagogy, which meant I got to go "LET ME TELL Y'ALL SOME THINGS!" and have a very nice time being excited about teaching Scottish and how to do it well. Had a clarifying moment that someone (me) should explicitly teach (at ESC?) the idea of how to do talk-throughs, in terms of moving your hands or creating your own physical anchor to the dance. Maybe this is going to even result in some kind of talk-through-only dance on one of the nights. :o
(No, I wouldn't do strictly-that, but maybe a "and here's the one where I do the talk-through first, and you think about it, and now try it out as a quick walkthrough".)
*Danced the contra medley today with Tuesday, which was mostly really good, and I felt very smug about being able to not just hold myself through contra corners, but one of the rounds rapid-talk one of the other couples who needed a little help and get them directed where they needed to be going.
*Which does kinda run counter to the _very good_ mini-conversation Magus and I had with Joanna Reiner about good pedagogy and shutting the fuck up on the dance floor, and gods, I would listen to that woman speak about how to call dances for _hours_. I would go to any level class of hers, any time, she might be one of the teachers I admire most in the folk world. But she said something along the lines of "Does this need to be said _by me_" and maybe it's arrogance but in that particular medley, maybe? I'm not gonna get bogged down in it.
*My demo team performance went quite well. There were a couple little bobbles, but not really anything other people would notice. Dancing with Linda was a delight and I'm very glad to have had her as a partner. One of the other dances in our same time-block was a young woman doing dances from Southern India, and she and I had a nice little mutual squee at the end as we were enthusiastic about each others' performances. She had just looked so _happy_ doing her dances, it was cool as hell!
*On Saturday I got to be on a little panel about dance safety, which felt like it went pretty well. Certainly it was nice to build new connections --I had not really met co-panelist Monya before then, and they and I kept touching base the rest of the fest to be friendly, and co-organizer Liz and I knew each other lightly, but also kept seeing each other during the fest and having more opportunities to hang. So it was a useful panel for social reasons, in addition to being a nice chance to have dedicated talking time about safety!
*Lots and lots of people I like, as mentioned, but it's worth mentioning again. Yay!
~Sor
MOOP!
no subject
on 2025-04-28 10:30 am (UTC)no subject
on 2025-04-29 06:20 pm (UTC)Don't know, but it's Kate's and my official definition of "date night".
(On our first trip abroad, when we were in Spain, we wound up in a piazza having tapas, both pulled out our Kindles, and just read and mellowed in each other's company for a couple of hours. It was delightful, so we try to do that at least once a month.)
no subject
on 2025-04-28 12:56 pm (UTC)no subject
on 2025-04-28 07:46 pm (UTC)