As usual I was running late. I had to take a little time to shoo a heifer out of the feeder as she had her whole body in the feeder. She also broke another board off the bottom and half the floor dropped down (that was Sunday morning's repair project).
They were in the middle of the first dance when I arrived. Other than one waltz later I danced all the remaining dances. The male/female ratio was tilted slightly towards more women than men which benefited the men who wanted to dance.
I ended up dancing from a little after 7 pm to a little after 10 pm when the dancing ended. I can now see why they suspend dancing in the summer - it wasn't that warm of weather yet I and others were working up a sweat from all the dancing.
Most of the contra dances this night were new ones to me. A few were real fun to dance and I learned more new moves. One dance had so much spinning and twirling that when the dance ended I was wobbly. My dance partner must have felt the same way as we held on to one another for a few minutes after the dance ended to get our balanced stabilized.
Another new move I learned was called the "mad robin" as the man did a do-si-do with his female neighbor walking in front of him all the while he locked eyes with his partner on the other side of the line.
Joyce - from hiking - came to this dance too. She is unfamiliar with contra dancing. I danced with her on one dance that was a little trickier than usual. She and I goofed up so badly that the caller actually stopped the dance to go over the steps we were screwing up. I think part of our problem was in that dance the caller showed the steps but didn't have everyone walk through at least one iteration of the dance.
We weren't the only people challenged as we encountered other couples in other dances who were confused as to what to do. Fortunately in most dances you move through sub groups of four people and usually one couple knows what to do if you forget a move.
I saw a number of people I know from folk dancing and other nights of contra dancing. Fran was there and when I mentioned I planned to take some dance classes at the local college she offered to be my partner for the classes if I needed a partner to sign up.
The Romanian woman with her 3 year old son was there. It was a problem at times as he and another very young kid wandered about the dance floor and we had to watch that we didn't step on them. I don't think she was able to dance as many dances as she would have liked as she had to watch him. The caller at times got a little annoyed at the kids and tried to get them to stay along the sides and out of the way of the dancers.
This time there were more people dancing than there were last month and part of the evening we had to form two lines as one line was too long for the room. I am not sure why but people drifted off before the night was through.
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