NEFFA Saturday!
Apr. 23rd, 2023 01:36 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
sorcyressSaturday of NEFFA! My legs are very sore (my knees especially are killing me, more on that later) but I'm feeling Pretty Happy, huzzah! It was a pretty good day, and I feel like I actually managed a really good balance of All The Possible Things. Also the day _flew_ by. Something about fun?
We arrived a wee bit after opening, but did the obligatory "wander around and say good morning to people" thing instead of leaping straight into an event. In my case, it was "chat for like thirty minutes with Susan dG, who I have not seen in several years even before the pandemic. It was nice to catch up with her some, and she gave me a bag of chocolate chip cookies, which I later used to make other friends happy. A-plus interaction all around!
The first actual scheduled thing I did today was the family Scottish Country Dance, mostly because Karen was calling and I haven't seen her anywhere other than zoom since the pandemic started. She did a pretty nice job --there were four or five ringers scattered about the room, just enough to really keep things flowing. Family dances tend to be simple and a little chaotic (sometimes people just appear or disappear!) but they make up for it by generally being quite fun.
After that I wound up chatting to Charis for a goodly chunk of time, and then we headed to Susan's American Cotillion session, which was a cool time. In retrospect, this might actually be part of why my knees are dead --it was a *much* more enthusiastic and athletic session than I was expecting, with lots and *lots* of unfamiliar bouncing. I had a good time of it, and got to dance with bellringer Rachel as well as Charis.
Gathered my ducklings (briefly made literal by me and Keira quacking as we went along) and went to get food. Lovely outdoor meal with The Scots Crowd --Magus, Keira, Charis, Annie, Ross, SarahS, Tuesday, and Laura dC all came through at various points to join the overlapping and ongoing conversations. Keira had set an *alarm* for the ECD Medley session, since we all wanted to go to that, which turned out to be _crucial_ --we made it in time, but it was close.
To the best of my knowledge, there's never been an ECD medley before at NEFFA (or anywhere?) It was being called by Tom Roby and Joanna Wilkenson, the latter of whom is one of my favourite callers in *any* tradition. I danced it with Tuesday and we had a nice time --there were a couple of hiccups from the stage side (the band was medleying English tunes _including at least one waltz tune_ so their timing had to go all over the place!) but very few from danceside, and we mostly just recovered them out. The very last dance was Softly Tumnus, and I was just...so happy to hear the first notes of that go and just realize I could full-ass relax and stop concentrating so hard, because yeah, I got this one.
(It wasn't YDW --it never is, anywhere except there-- and it wasn't ESC-last-summer-doing-hardshoe-with-Katherine-Giacoletti, but Softly Tumnus is never a bad English dance, and the floor they had echoed *magnificently* with my hard-heeled dance shoes. Those stomps were Very Good Actually!)
After the ECD medley was watching some Rapper and Morris performances --I got to hang with friend-Kyle a bit (and tell him that he's my apprentice!) and watch Clara do rapper, plus see Stephan and Val for a wee bit, plus meet Mel and Hannah's wee babby dinosaur! Also there was a Morris team using a giant slingshot to launch a rubber chicken over their dancers? Sometimes my hobbies are very silly.
Back to the big hall for the contra medley, which was....much less good than the ECD. I did get to dance with Chocofrosh, who I spotted just as people were lining up and pounced upon. It was quite fun to dance a bunch with him! That part was really good! We wound up in a line though with a _lot_ of dancers who were _way_ too eager to clamp down on my hands or wrists and I just don't truck with that. You don't need your thumbs to dance, and I do need my hands to be protected, so sorry, I'm a rude robin who will pop your hands off my own if necessary.
The medley itself was pretty good --they had contra corners in the middle which was...I mean, the first couple rounds were a disaster, but it largely settled. I did a whole bunch of directional shouting in the early bits (partner right! corner left!) and then stopped for a round at which point ChocoFrosh was all "no, please keep going" which was gratifying.
next paragraph has a CW: death mention
I scheduled 45 minutes to get from the Medley to my next event, which was in the other building about 1000 feet away. I used...basically all of them. Ran into Tracy right before and wound up sitting with him, which was actually really nice. It's the only music event I've really done, and it was Important for me to do it. See, several years ago at NEFFA I encountered the folk-rennie-pirate band The Kings Busketeers and fell in love with them. They're an awesome fucking trio! And one of their members died unexpectedly and suddenly last January, so this was a memorial jam session for him.
Previous paragraph CW: death mention
The jam was really good! It was a good mix of serious-versus-silly. I led "the shouty version of Mary had a Little Lamb"1 because the first time I'd ever heard it was at a Kings Busketeers NEFFA sesh in 2017 (sung by Red, who was sprawled on the floor a couple chairs away --it felt good to close that loop!). A couple of the songs made me cry, which was fine, it was the right space for that.
Post-Jam I met up with Tuesday and started wilting a little --we ordered slightly overpriced and extremely mediocre food from the hotel restaurant, and ate it in an empty corner of the lobby. It was really good to have that quiet hour with her and just do nothing for a while.
The calories kicked in just when they were supposed to, and we made it to the Blues lesson on time. That was _great_ --I dance blues solely on vibes, but it's really good to learn some more building blocks to improve said vibes. The focus was a style I'm not super familiar with, which involved a lot of knees-bent-and-butt-out. Like...a full hour straight of that. So after I danced with my knees bent for an hour, they were _very sad_.
...not so sad that I couldn't do some Blues dancing tho! I danced with several people, and also with Tuesday several times. Apparently I am now that asshole who comes to the dance and primarily dances with their regular-type partner instead of being more varied. Sorry-not-sorry, she's a babe and I like dancing with her! (and I did get in some really lovely dances with other folk as well!)
Then we drove home and now I am exhausted goodnight!
~Sor
MOOP!
1: HURRAH FOR MARY! HURRAH FOR THE LAMB! HURRAH FOR THE UNION BOYS WHO DID NOT GIVE A DAMN! And everywhere that Mary went that lamb was sure to go. SHOUTING THE BATTLE CRY OF FREEEEE-DOM!
We arrived a wee bit after opening, but did the obligatory "wander around and say good morning to people" thing instead of leaping straight into an event. In my case, it was "chat for like thirty minutes with Susan dG, who I have not seen in several years even before the pandemic. It was nice to catch up with her some, and she gave me a bag of chocolate chip cookies, which I later used to make other friends happy. A-plus interaction all around!
The first actual scheduled thing I did today was the family Scottish Country Dance, mostly because Karen was calling and I haven't seen her anywhere other than zoom since the pandemic started. She did a pretty nice job --there were four or five ringers scattered about the room, just enough to really keep things flowing. Family dances tend to be simple and a little chaotic (sometimes people just appear or disappear!) but they make up for it by generally being quite fun.
After that I wound up chatting to Charis for a goodly chunk of time, and then we headed to Susan's American Cotillion session, which was a cool time. In retrospect, this might actually be part of why my knees are dead --it was a *much* more enthusiastic and athletic session than I was expecting, with lots and *lots* of unfamiliar bouncing. I had a good time of it, and got to dance with bellringer Rachel as well as Charis.
Gathered my ducklings (briefly made literal by me and Keira quacking as we went along) and went to get food. Lovely outdoor meal with The Scots Crowd --Magus, Keira, Charis, Annie, Ross, SarahS, Tuesday, and Laura dC all came through at various points to join the overlapping and ongoing conversations. Keira had set an *alarm* for the ECD Medley session, since we all wanted to go to that, which turned out to be _crucial_ --we made it in time, but it was close.
To the best of my knowledge, there's never been an ECD medley before at NEFFA (or anywhere?) It was being called by Tom Roby and Joanna Wilkenson, the latter of whom is one of my favourite callers in *any* tradition. I danced it with Tuesday and we had a nice time --there were a couple of hiccups from the stage side (the band was medleying English tunes _including at least one waltz tune_ so their timing had to go all over the place!) but very few from danceside, and we mostly just recovered them out. The very last dance was Softly Tumnus, and I was just...so happy to hear the first notes of that go and just realize I could full-ass relax and stop concentrating so hard, because yeah, I got this one.
(It wasn't YDW --it never is, anywhere except there-- and it wasn't ESC-last-summer-doing-hardshoe-with-Katherine-Giacoletti, but Softly Tumnus is never a bad English dance, and the floor they had echoed *magnificently* with my hard-heeled dance shoes. Those stomps were Very Good Actually!)
After the ECD medley was watching some Rapper and Morris performances --I got to hang with friend-Kyle a bit (and tell him that he's my apprentice!) and watch Clara do rapper, plus see Stephan and Val for a wee bit, plus meet Mel and Hannah's wee babby dinosaur! Also there was a Morris team using a giant slingshot to launch a rubber chicken over their dancers? Sometimes my hobbies are very silly.
Back to the big hall for the contra medley, which was....much less good than the ECD. I did get to dance with Chocofrosh, who I spotted just as people were lining up and pounced upon. It was quite fun to dance a bunch with him! That part was really good! We wound up in a line though with a _lot_ of dancers who were _way_ too eager to clamp down on my hands or wrists and I just don't truck with that. You don't need your thumbs to dance, and I do need my hands to be protected, so sorry, I'm a rude robin who will pop your hands off my own if necessary.
The medley itself was pretty good --they had contra corners in the middle which was...I mean, the first couple rounds were a disaster, but it largely settled. I did a whole bunch of directional shouting in the early bits (partner right! corner left!) and then stopped for a round at which point ChocoFrosh was all "no, please keep going" which was gratifying.
next paragraph has a CW: death mention
I scheduled 45 minutes to get from the Medley to my next event, which was in the other building about 1000 feet away. I used...basically all of them. Ran into Tracy right before and wound up sitting with him, which was actually really nice. It's the only music event I've really done, and it was Important for me to do it. See, several years ago at NEFFA I encountered the folk-rennie-pirate band The Kings Busketeers and fell in love with them. They're an awesome fucking trio! And one of their members died unexpectedly and suddenly last January, so this was a memorial jam session for him.
Previous paragraph CW: death mention
The jam was really good! It was a good mix of serious-versus-silly. I led "the shouty version of Mary had a Little Lamb"1 because the first time I'd ever heard it was at a Kings Busketeers NEFFA sesh in 2017 (sung by Red, who was sprawled on the floor a couple chairs away --it felt good to close that loop!). A couple of the songs made me cry, which was fine, it was the right space for that.
Post-Jam I met up with Tuesday and started wilting a little --we ordered slightly overpriced and extremely mediocre food from the hotel restaurant, and ate it in an empty corner of the lobby. It was really good to have that quiet hour with her and just do nothing for a while.
The calories kicked in just when they were supposed to, and we made it to the Blues lesson on time. That was _great_ --I dance blues solely on vibes, but it's really good to learn some more building blocks to improve said vibes. The focus was a style I'm not super familiar with, which involved a lot of knees-bent-and-butt-out. Like...a full hour straight of that. So after I danced with my knees bent for an hour, they were _very sad_.
...not so sad that I couldn't do some Blues dancing tho! I danced with several people, and also with Tuesday several times. Apparently I am now that asshole who comes to the dance and primarily dances with their regular-type partner instead of being more varied. Sorry-not-sorry, she's a babe and I like dancing with her! (and I did get in some really lovely dances with other folk as well!)
Then we drove home and now I am exhausted goodnight!
~Sor
MOOP!
1: HURRAH FOR MARY! HURRAH FOR THE LAMB! HURRAH FOR THE UNION BOYS WHO DID NOT GIVE A DAMN! And everywhere that Mary went that lamb was sure to go. SHOUTING THE BATTLE CRY OF FREEEEE-DOM!
no subject
on 2023-04-23 02:38 pm (UTC)no subject
on 2023-04-23 02:59 pm (UTC)https://lauradi7dw.dreamwidth.org/2015/04/26/
The other game songs were Mario Brothers and Angry Birds. The band was Contraindicated. I couldn't find the game dance music, but here is a video of the same session, with a Disney song (Bare necessities).
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FooTnl5tteM
Look! It's Kate! And Andy! and Emily!? Robert?
no subject
on 2023-04-27 03:31 pm (UTC)The rest of this is my best reconstruction of why, which might be 100% wrong:
I think "Union" came first and it was a civil war song. I think it got adapted during the Fenian Raids a decade later: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fenian_raids
And then picked up by various Irish independence movements over the next century, and then it was probably just drunk people in Boston and the folk community local to us. I assume some people still sing it "Union", but I am nearly certain Red is not one of them, and I only knew it was sometimes "Union" because I looked it up once.
You may have good political reasons for singing whatever the hell you feel like, and anyway everyone else is singing really loudly and I expect nobody cares even if they can hear you. Except maybe drunk Irish people in pubs in Boston; I might be careful there.