Torture

Torture. I'm torturing myself.

My sister and I started an English Country Dance(ECD) group in Omaha last December, going from knowing no ECD to teaching it in two weeks. Then I kind of took it over, because I do that sometimes and Jen is busyer than I am, anyway. So every once in a while I get to studying dance music and easy dances we can add to our small collection. Today was such a day. Our next dance is in two weeks, and I'm planning on introducing a few new dances to our group.

As far as music goes, basically, if it's not on Amazon, I'm not buying it. When you get into such an obscure genre like dance music from the 18th century, there are some poor sound quality albums out there, and I want quality sound. And we need lively music, people! We're dancing, not trying to get to sleep. I want a cross between bluegrass music and Irish, with the refinement of colonial dance tunes. It drives me mad to spend hours looking and only find a handful of tunes that will work. Obviously we don't have a live band.

Then I get to finding new dance instructions to use at our next dance. It's not too hard to find actual dance instructions; but it really, really helps to see a youtube video of the dance before I go teach it to thirty people staring at me from the dance floor. So again, if I can't find it on youtube, sometimes I just have to ditch the dance because I can't understand it.

I really enjoy ECD, which is surprising considering my history with dancing: I have none. My sister danced from an early age. I never did a dance step until in high school our home school co-op gave a country line dance class, of which I took one session and was terrible at it. Then Wham, I discovered ECD and loved it.

So in the end, after spending hours and hours studying dances, gathering information, sampling and purchasing music, I have to wait for a once a month event at which I can't even dance all the dances because I'm one of the callers! And the guys wonder why I get upset when they don't ask me(or any other girl, for that matter) to dance! One word: Frustrating. Two more words, for the guys: Learn Chivalry.