One of the things that tends to give contra flourishers a bad name is when they are, as one dancer once put it to me, "all flourish and no dance:" i.e., the dancer completely, utterly, and intentionally ignores the phrasing of the dance to the point that it interferes with other dancers' enjoyment. This is rather unfortunate, because it can be done otherwise, and in a way that only involves the dancers who consent to it. For me, to be perfectly honest, swinging the exact same way every single time through a dance, and having the exact same connection, the exact same relationship with everyone in the line seems disingenuous.
Some people like an easier swing, some people like a faster one, some people like it when I match their strength with my own and throw everything I've got at them and I immensely enjoy the variety. Good flourishers tend to be able to find the potential for chaos within the order and accentuate it -- without breaking the order of the dance on the whole. (Incidentally, this is part of why a lot of our Friday Flourishes have the caveat of making sure you have enough space, both musically and on the floor, to pull them out.)
This is, of course, speaking in the ideal -- the way to get good at anything is to try and to fail a few dozen times until you get it right. One of the fabulous things about contra is that it is newbie-friendly, and part of its newbie-friendliness is the latitude to mess up.
There are more orderly and more "chaotic" dance forms out there than contra: square dance, for instance, is largely about the intricate patterns and teamwork of the square. Partner dancing, rather than social dancing, is entirely about the connection between partners and one pair doing one move has nothing to do with another pair doing a completely different move elsewhere on the floor. One of the beautiful things about contra is the potential for both (and the dynamic tension between them), and to my mind both sorts of connections should be supported and nourished, by flourishers and non-flourishers alike.
