xECD

9/14/2011

One of the interesting things when I've been looking around at the modern contra dance tradition is the really funky dichotomy that seems to be drawn between contra with flourishes and the insistence of many (I know, not all) flourish-heavy contra dancers that the opposite of contra with flourishes isn't contra dance but is in fact English Country Dance. In particular, thinking of Dancing Fool out in Washington state, which advertises itself as "All Thrills, No Frills, and especially No English," and one time when Steve and I went to the local ECD dance and someone threw in a flourish, only to be called an "unrepentant contra dancer!" To be fair, the latter comment was at least partially in jest. I think.

This also meant that I was particularly interested when regular Contra Syncretist commenter Perry Shafran pointed me to a Facebook group for "Extreme ECD" in the Forum. Essentially, the idea seems to be that it's ECD that takes the choreography as written and uses it as a framework, much like good flourishers do when they contra dance. It might be interesting to see how such things are received in the ECD community. I know I see fewer flourishes at ECD than I do in contra when I go, but I'm also usually paying more attention to my own dancing space in ECD than I am in contra since I don't do it as often.

I'd be interested to go try xECD sometime, at the very least, although I also know that the choreography in ECD -- at least for me -- tends to involve more active concentration than contra does. (That said, I do still enjoy ECD as well as contra and find the idea that they're opposites to be kind of bizarre; I can usually be found at dance weekends starting my Saturday mornings with ECD if it's available, and I occasionally head out to my local weekly ECD series.)

I welcome your thoughts and comments -- feel free to share in the comments section!

Hollis Easter link

9/14/2011 02:25:03 am

I think it partly reaches back to a couple of the earlier discussions about the nature of a tradition, and it also touches on colonial issues. I think ECD is likely to be a bit less open to flourishing and chance in part because it's a borrowed tradition (not native to the USA), which gives us the whole colonial adherence-to-the-model-is-what-keeps-you-right-with-God thing. The colonials often demand much stronger fidelity to the tradition than do the people who invented the tradition: see also, the spread of churches throughout new continents, many musical diasporas, etc. Contra is our own, for the most part, which lends this willingness to adapt and change it.

I think a lot of people also come to ECD with a very specific idea of what kind of "vibe" they want, and you'll often hear the word "Jane" followed by "Austen" when you ask people to describe it. Certainly not true of all ECDers--I learned to do ECD in college in Philly, where flourishing was welcomed--but I've seen the preference for elegant, reserved, demure dancing a lot of times in the years since college.

So I wonder how much the difference in flourishing culture relates to the underlying difference in social expectations for dance events. My girlfriend describes contra dance as "being on a human-powered Tilt-a-Whirl"; ECD is more often described as "stately", "classy", "elegant", etc. I wonder whether the proscriptions against drawing attention to oneself in upper-crust society extend to dance flourishes as well.

This is, perhaps, treading on dangerous ground, but I think there's also a fairly ingrained desire to define ourselves by What We Are Not, and this tribal approach often appears in the dance and music worlds. It's almost like putting other styles down is a shibboleth in some groups, like you can't have any street cred unless you bash the other dancers. No bloody English dancers here! But we love contras that use the "gypsy" figure. We don't want any of that stupid redneck country music, but we'll take a bunch of bluegrass please... Scottish dancers are stuck up, contra dancers never shower and have lousy geography, Morris dancers are all weird and have this unfathomable relationship to ribbons and bells, swing dancers are all ... the list goes on.

Thus, the tribal definitions. They amuse us, they entertain us, and sometimes they make it into the fabric of how we see the dance world. The funny thing is that there's this collective silent agreement to pigeonhole and compartmentalize our dancing, and to keep quiet about it: thursday is ECD night, and we don't talk about contra. Tuesday is Scottish night, and we don't talk about ECD or contra; Saturday is contra night, and we don't talk about anything because we're too busy hooting and hollering. And in some groups, it's almost a shameful secret if you happen to enjoy all these different dances--it's like admitting infidelity.

Something I really like about Contra Syncretist is that you're actively encouraging people to look at those boundaries and to act creatively within their dancing, inviting a fusion of styles. As I've said before, I think it's important to be *able* to speak authentically from tradition, but I also think it's fun to be able to speak a pidgin of many traditions, dancing Scottish two-hand turns with pas-de-basque instead of balance-and-swing, or perhaps doing some swing/blues flourishes, or whatever. There's that "fun" word again... :)

Thanks for the prompt!
Hollis

Comments are closed.

xECD

Author

Archives

Categories