Dance Diversity

[kokopelle]

I got a lesson about diversity this past weekend at Summer Soirée. What is diversity? Webster says it is “the quality or state of having many different forms, types, ideas, etc.”. Many forms is the vision I've had! Here is the scoop: I've been dancing contra for almost fourteen years now. I am pretty aware of the basic contra moves. I am also aware of other dance moves going on in my local contra dance community. Where the heck did they come from? I heard rumors they were associated with something called swing, but I didn't really know. Now I know where the non-contra dance forms originated.

I attended a workshop called “East Coast Swing”. Hank Morris and Tracy Bulostin walked us through some basic swing moves. I think this was officially the fourth time I had done swing dancing. Anyway, I learned some new movies and realized that I had seen the moves somewhere else. I had seen them at contra! Ah! Diversity of dance as different forms come together in the thing called contra. I spoke to a friend about this and they said that contra was pretty open to a bit of diversity. I am so tickled that I learned the swing moves.

Now I get to go back to my local contra dance hall and try out these new swing moves. I suspect they will serve me well in both contra and waltzing. Shoot, I tried a couple doing a waltz during the weekend and the results were promising! Color me excited. A little diversity is a good thing. A lot is probably a great thing. Let's see what we can do with this!