{"items": [{"author": "Andrew", "source_link": "https://www.facebook.com/jefftk/posts/274134472627571?comment_id=274166179291067", "anchor": "fb-274166179291067", "service": "fb", "text": "I assume that you mean, \"it's hard as a musician to ignore dancers who are ignoring the music.\"  As you note, this should be less common in contra dancing than in barn dancing.<br><br>I am sad that in contra dancing, there are many callers and musicians who ignore the dancing, and in turn, the dancers ignore the timing cues in the music.  Though the calling and music may be entertaining, it creates bad dancing.<br><br>By bad, I mean erratic - like driving in stop and go traffic, especially bad when you are trying to dance to a fast tempo, because if you try to dance with the tempo, you have to dance around people who are dancing in the past, and those people dance carelessly as they continue to deal with their timing problem.<br><br>I think most dancers aren't sensitive to this, since they seem to enjoy it (probably because they are excited by the music and the crowd), but I find such chaos irritating and disappointing, because I know that the caller and musicians could do better if they were paying attention to the dancing, and then the dancers could do better too.", "timestamp": "1321113677"}, {"author": "Dustin", "source_link": "https://www.facebook.com/jefftk/posts/274134472627571?comment_id=274179542623064", "anchor": "fb-274179542623064", "service": "fb", "text": "Andrew, the one thing we all admire about you is your impeccable timing. Your ability to ignore other dancers and plow through them to ensure that you're on the music is admirable.", "timestamp": "1321115578"}, {"author": "Jeff&nbsp;Kaufman", "source_link": "https://www.facebook.com/jefftk/posts/274134472627571?comment_id=274181089289576", "anchor": "fb-274181089289576", "service": "fb", "text": "@Andrew: It's not that the square dancers were ignoring the music, but that they were not dancing to the phrase.  They're doing southern squares, they're not *supposed* to be dancing to the phrase.  They were on the beat, and enthusiastic, but it's very different from the new england square or contra aesthetic.", "timestamp": "1321115804"}, {"author": "Andrew", "source_link": "https://www.facebook.com/jefftk/posts/274134472627571?comment_id=274186729289012", "anchor": "fb-274186729289012", "service": "fb", "text": "yes, i intended to address the problem of how contra callers and musicians lead dancers away from the phrase, where ignoring that disconnection leads to rough dancing, at least for dancers who are sensitive to it.  i know that in southern squares callers are not so careful to maintain phrasing (i hesitate to use the term \"square phrasing), and the tunes are often so monotonous (I don't mean that as an insult) that the phrasing of the tune isn't as important.", "timestamp": "1321116611"}, {"author": "Phillip", "source_link": "https://www.facebook.com/jefftk/posts/274134472627571?comment_id=274195015954850", "anchor": "fb-274195015954850", "service": "fb", "text": "Let me observe that there are a number of cues that occur in contra: the caller, the walk through (a static version of the caller),  the band/music, and the other dancers being the large subsets. This discussion highlights that individual dancers give different weights to each of these cues. Ideally each of these subsets would work toward making the dancing as fun as possible for everyone (I am blessed with emotional wiring that says I'm not having fun unless my partner is, which is a good start on the dancing side). Let me highlight a pet peeve, which is a negative contribution: Gender bending. I happen to take information from the genders of the couple coming toward me. If they are same sex I know it doesn't matter(and don't worry because there is no information), and if they are opposite sex I assume I know something about where I am supposed to be, or if I have messed up. The saving grace is gender benders tend to be advanced dancers who have a very good sense of their place on the floor. That said sometimes I am messed up and have less recovery time, and other times I am not messed, try to recover, and then figure out I was already where I was supposed to be. Ignoring the pet peeve aspect, it is worthwhile noting that everyone's cues are different, and that deficiencies in any of them, will affect some percentage of dancers to some degree.", "timestamp": "1321117749"}, {"author": "Jeff&nbsp;Kaufman", "source_link": "https://www.facebook.com/jefftk/posts/274134472627571?comment_id=274210615953290", "anchor": "fb-274210615953290", "service": "fb", "text": "(This is kind of off topic, but something I'm interested in)<br><br>@Phillip: People definitely use a lot of different cues to know whether they are in the right place and doing the right thing.  If you can rely on people to dance the same role as their gender, then that is a useful cue.  If a both people in a couple are the same gender, or if a male/female couple could be intending to dance either way around, this handy checksum loses value.<br><br>I think where we approach this differently is that I think not having to match your dancing role to your gender is quite valuable.   Sometimes I want to dance with friends who are the same gender as I am.  Some people have complicated gender identities, where they feel more comfortable dancing a role different from the gender they appear as.  And both roles are fun, and I want to get to enjoy both of them.<br><br>When I compare the value of being able to reliably read someone's gender as a cue against the value of being able to dance any gender, it looks to me like gender bending comes out way ahead.  Am I looking at this wrong?", "timestamp": "1321120014"}, {"author": "Phillip", "source_link": "https://www.facebook.com/jefftk/posts/274134472627571?comment_id=274228079284877", "anchor": "fb-274228079284877", "service": "fb", "text": "I use the term gender bend to specifically mean man taking the women's role and women taking the man's role. I fear one thing wasn't clear, same sex couples work fine for me (there are some really great male dancers), because I am not fooled by a prevalent trend. In a same sex couple one can take either role (I should do this more myself because it is instructive to dance the women's role with someone with more mass and strength to gain perspective and humility). I would say you can dance any role and with any gender, but taking the opposite role with the opposite gender seems unnecessary. (I hate to think what it does to a newbie).   Going on a tangent, I was dancing with a new young women, and then later that evening talking to her it occurred to me to explain to her that men dance together because of the shortage of women, not because they are necessarily gay. It was clear from our conversation that she had been confused on this point (and her subsequent conversation confirmed this). This had impacted her asking guys (her preference) to dance. It is interesting what assumptions we bring and we make.", "timestamp": "1321122489"}, {"author": "Andrew", "source_link": "https://www.facebook.com/jefftk/posts/274134472627571?comment_id=274241282616890", "anchor": "fb-274241282616890", "service": "fb", "text": "I'm on my way out of town, so I won't be able to post for long, but I'm interested in the discussion of what causes dancers to become disoriented.  I understand that the various cues you've mentioned are all relevant, and different ones are important to different people.  I hear, Phillip, that gender role swapping throws you off, and I understand that it can be confusing.<br><br>I think I do more gender-role swapping than most dancers.  When I dance same-sex, I like to swap because it makes the dance more interesting (and balanced) for me and my partner.  When I'm dancing with a woman, I wouldn't ask her to gender-swap at a contra dance, unless it was a gender-free dance where this is expected.  But I am happy to go along with my partner's role choices.  There are also cases where you might assume that a dancer has a gender-role (in dance and in life), but their choice might not agree with your assumption.  There are a handful of gay, transgender, and androgynous dancers in our contra community, and I understand that their role choices can cause confusion on and off the dance floor.<br><br>Re the saving fact that gender-role swappers tend to be more adept than most dancers, I find that that's true in some cases and not others.  In general, I think role swapping takes more skill, and there are some dancers who can do it easily, and others who make a mess of it.  And I find that some novice dancers are inclined to try every fancy variation on contra dancing before they have a firm grasp of the fundamental patterns of the dance, and these people tend to be difficult to dance with.  I find that in most cases, the problems with these novice dancers is that they focus entirely on themselves and their partners while ignoring the other people in the sets, and ignoring the general flow of the dance.", "timestamp": "1321124387"}, {"author": "Phillip", "source_link": "https://www.facebook.com/jefftk/posts/274134472627571?comment_id=274399705934381", "anchor": "fb-274399705934381", "service": "fb", "text": "I found my most humbling contra experience I have had was at a dance that was 90% new folks up in Gloucester that Dan Pearl ran. Dan was doing simple dances, but it was there I discovered how much I depended on most people getting it mostly right. I hoped to be anchor to help Dan out, but discovered how easily I could be thrown off and be part of the problem as opposed to part of the solution. I have the order of the pattern in my head, but rarely strong enough to go each place despite others being in the wrong place. If a couple is out of place, I can help, but at two couples or more, I don't have enough to hang on to to help.", "timestamp": "1321148897"}, {"author": "Rick", "source_link": "https://www.facebook.com/jefftk/posts/274134472627571?comment_id=274557539251931", "anchor": "fb-274557539251931", "service": "fb", "text": "Back to the Barn Dance: I found it fun, but I also found it a bit frustrating/difficult to play bass for this type of music.  I'm used to playing a strong beat right on the downbeat (since the bass is basically a rhythm instrument).  The feedback I was getting from the band was that for this type of music, you should play a little before the downbeat.  I found this to be confusing.", "timestamp": "1321186223"}]}