You know, the last 10 times I started a blog entry, I was reminded me of the fact that, 10 entries ago, was my 100th post. I don't know. It felt like some sort of milestone. 100 blog entries. 100 little essays and stories and quotes and remarks about articles in the New Yorker. I don't know what, exactly, I have accomplished, but I do know I'm still enjoying the blog, more now than I used to, actually. It becomes interesting to think about one's life in more general, universal, mythic terms - because, in case you haven't noticed by now, that's what I aim to do: point out how we, all of us, are more the same and more unique than we can imagine. As my friend E, my ex-professor who lives in Long Beach and adores wine and good living, said, "Whenever I travel, especially abroad, I think two things, more or less equally: everything is so different, and everything is the same."
I know just what he means. It's the time of this year's Dickens Faire, which I just love, and go to every weekend. I've mentioned it before, but in brief, it's like the Renaissance Faire, only indoors, and Queen Victoria instead of Queen Elizabeth, so less clevage. But you get the idea. The Dickens Faire is way more fun just because it's based on "A Christmas Carol," (the only Dickens book I like) which really does capture the essence of Christmas, and I love Christmas. After more than a decade of going to the Dickens Faire, Christmas and snowy Victorian England are synonymous with me. It's inside the Cow Palace, but the fiction is, the shops line the "streets" and then you can go "inside" into the tea shop, or theater, or Fezziwig's Dance Party - this last one being where I spend the majority of my time.
I love to dance, specifically, waltz, specifically rotary vintage waltz, which is what everyone who goes to this event knows how to do. I remember the first time my partner and I walked into the Faire - we went on one Dec 23rd, having seen it in the paper and thought it seemed interesting, why not give it a try? - and we were absolutely amazed at the sheer number of people who apparently knew how to do Victorian ballroom dancing. Who the hell were these people? So many of them! And...they all also seemed to have impeccable costumes - the men with perfect mutton chops. Where did they all come from?
I loved it right off - I have a romantic sensibility - I am suited to the costume of the those times - I love to dance. I had danced swing, and that was fun, although ultimately tiring. Tango was awesome too if a little high-pressure. But the waltz was easy - I took to that right away, rather naturally, and I turned out to be...if I do say so myself, I say it only because so many people have told me...a pretty good dancer. I am light on my feet, surprisingly so for my size; it's fun when I have a new partner and I see in their expression the very moment when they realize they are not going to have to drag a sack of potatoes around the floor, which is every lead's fear - a follow that won't follow.
I follow. That's my entire tactic: give over to the lead, whatever it is. He's leading. Sure, I help navigate sometimes - even follows have to help navigate when the floor is crowded or you *will* smack into each other - and I can also gently do the right thing when my follow is unsure. I try not to ever backlead unless I am teaching someone. A favorite partner of mine summed it up this way: "You anticipate. That is a good thing."
And so here I was again....a whole year later, even though the Faire is one of those things that make you feel "Wasn't I *just* here?" Like Disneyland, or summer, or your birthday. It's a year in between, and yet it seems like it was just yesterday. My favorite dance partner (other than my actual partner) said this very same thing. "We were just here, yet it was a year ago." He shook his head. "I don't really understand time," he said, and we laughed and shook our heads and when whirling around the dance floor.
Yes, the Faire is a place where you can actual whirl around the dance floor, full hoop skirts a flowing, lights a spinning....some handsome bearded gentleman in a stiff collar, natty cravat and awesome sideburns looking you in the eyes. You get some partners that are into that: romantic waltzing eye contact. I'm pretty good at eye contact from my tango training - you have to develop the "face." The neutral, or slightly pleasant/amused expression, where you just meet the person's gaze, and let them do whatever they want, react however they want. It's like listening, but eye contact. You listen with your eyes, and when you find someone who can really respond to it, there's nothing like it. If you are also waltzing, in a gown and corset - how can you not love it?
Today, we were discussing the weird phenomenon of knowing all these acquaintances (some of them Facebook friends), these people we see year after year, starting to be decade after decade, and yet I've only seen them in spats and top hats. I remember one time I saw saw a Dickens' regular in jeans a tee shirt, I didn't recognize him for way too long a time to seem normal. It's weird. Do I know these people or not?
And then everyone has a persona (well, not me - I'm a patron - but the players do), which makes it complicated, because instead of not knowing their name, 10 years and 100 dances later, I know too many of their names. I have one Faire acquaintance/Facebook friend who, at the Faire is either Mr. S, or B, but who, in real life, I know as J - although my "in real life" has never been in person, only via Facebook; oh, the irony. Then there's G, who calls himself Mr. H (I'm preserving their identities; blog readers may know - or BE - these people); and R, whose Faire name is Mr. U, very clever once I realized R and U were both antique typewriters. They are a curious group, these people. Some of them my partner and I have made up names for: there's the one we call Alexander the Great, who has a great head of hair, giant bouncy blond ringlets, and the one we call the Super Mr. Dancing Guy - he's hard to describe but you'd know him if you saw him....he once gave me a Blue Danube Waltz that I will never forget as long as I live, and the one that looks like my friend P.
There's all these people I know, even though I don't know them, and it's oddly entertaining. My partner and I enjoy talking about these characters, about the dynamics of the group, making observations and speculating on relationships and imagining funny behind-the-scenes action. That sounds weirdly stalker-like, but it's not like that - it's more like the fun Woody Allen style people watching + commentary, but just raised to the next level, of adding "over time" and that kind of makes it more fun and challenging. The Faire has routines, and it's funny and fun to watch everyone holding to them - to do it oneself. You get the sense of tradition, actual tradition. "Slap, bang, here we are again, here we are again" is a phrase we all have to sing during a particular silly polka mixer, and it's true. We all have that feeling, here we are again. It's the community thing - like the circlesing, like my company, like the M____ House. And God knows communities are scarce - you have to take them where you can find them.
Fortunately, there are many different and varied communities: the online ones, the in-person ones, the intermittent ones (like Dickens, which is every December; some altered version of "Same Time, Next Year" the 1975 play/1978 film of two people who have a long-standing affair of meeting just one weekend per year). The ones borne of blood, the ones borne by chance. Any way you can get one, I say, go for it, as long as the two of you are having a beneficial effect on each other.
I had a few very good dances today, and every very good dance is special - a lot of things have to come together: the music, the partner, the mood, the costumes, the level of crowd on the floor (you know, some leads are better with room, some leads are better with crowds, like a racehorse that prefers a muddy track to fine). When it works, it really feels like something is happening; when it comes together with a sense of finesse and artistic flourish, it's marvelous. Ending together - if you read this blog, you know I love that moment of musicians ending together: when the circlesing leader stops the circle on a dime, or when my silly little Bernal Heights String Quartet managed to time it so each note faded away at the exact same time. It can happen also with partner dancing, when the two of you end right on time. In tango, it's mandatory - you hear that end coming, and you better be ready for that final "da-DUM," or it's like not finishing your sexual act - lame and kind of rude.
It's less crucial in the waltz, but it's a very lovely live band that plays at the Faire (piano, flute, two violins) and they do have that classical music thing of hittting a final last chord with precision, and if you can get a partner who can time that final turn under the arm that ends with a bow and curtsey so perfectly that you both end right at the final chord - well, that's heaven. I had that happen once today.
And this is only Day One of the Dickens Faire! You locals should come check it out - even if you don't like it, you should at least try it because people who try it sometimes end up really liking it. And you don't want to miss it just in case you are one of them.
I know just what he means. It's the time of this year's Dickens Faire, which I just love, and go to every weekend. I've mentioned it before, but in brief, it's like the Renaissance Faire, only indoors, and Queen Victoria instead of Queen Elizabeth, so less clevage. But you get the idea. The Dickens Faire is way more fun just because it's based on "A Christmas Carol," (the only Dickens book I like) which really does capture the essence of Christmas, and I love Christmas. After more than a decade of going to the Dickens Faire, Christmas and snowy Victorian England are synonymous with me. It's inside the Cow Palace, but the fiction is, the shops line the "streets" and then you can go "inside" into the tea shop, or theater, or Fezziwig's Dance Party - this last one being where I spend the majority of my time.
I love to dance, specifically, waltz, specifically rotary vintage waltz, which is what everyone who goes to this event knows how to do. I remember the first time my partner and I walked into the Faire - we went on one Dec 23rd, having seen it in the paper and thought it seemed interesting, why not give it a try? - and we were absolutely amazed at the sheer number of people who apparently knew how to do Victorian ballroom dancing. Who the hell were these people? So many of them! And...they all also seemed to have impeccable costumes - the men with perfect mutton chops. Where did they all come from?
I loved it right off - I have a romantic sensibility - I am suited to the costume of the those times - I love to dance. I had danced swing, and that was fun, although ultimately tiring. Tango was awesome too if a little high-pressure. But the waltz was easy - I took to that right away, rather naturally, and I turned out to be...if I do say so myself, I say it only because so many people have told me...a pretty good dancer. I am light on my feet, surprisingly so for my size; it's fun when I have a new partner and I see in their expression the very moment when they realize they are not going to have to drag a sack of potatoes around the floor, which is every lead's fear - a follow that won't follow.
I follow. That's my entire tactic: give over to the lead, whatever it is. He's leading. Sure, I help navigate sometimes - even follows have to help navigate when the floor is crowded or you *will* smack into each other - and I can also gently do the right thing when my follow is unsure. I try not to ever backlead unless I am teaching someone. A favorite partner of mine summed it up this way: "You anticipate. That is a good thing."
And so here I was again....a whole year later, even though the Faire is one of those things that make you feel "Wasn't I *just* here?" Like Disneyland, or summer, or your birthday. It's a year in between, and yet it seems like it was just yesterday. My favorite dance partner (other than my actual partner) said this very same thing. "We were just here, yet it was a year ago." He shook his head. "I don't really understand time," he said, and we laughed and shook our heads and when whirling around the dance floor.
Yes, the Faire is a place where you can actual whirl around the dance floor, full hoop skirts a flowing, lights a spinning....some handsome bearded gentleman in a stiff collar, natty cravat and awesome sideburns looking you in the eyes. You get some partners that are into that: romantic waltzing eye contact. I'm pretty good at eye contact from my tango training - you have to develop the "face." The neutral, or slightly pleasant/amused expression, where you just meet the person's gaze, and let them do whatever they want, react however they want. It's like listening, but eye contact. You listen with your eyes, and when you find someone who can really respond to it, there's nothing like it. If you are also waltzing, in a gown and corset - how can you not love it?
Today, we were discussing the weird phenomenon of knowing all these acquaintances (some of them Facebook friends), these people we see year after year, starting to be decade after decade, and yet I've only seen them in spats and top hats. I remember one time I saw saw a Dickens' regular in jeans a tee shirt, I didn't recognize him for way too long a time to seem normal. It's weird. Do I know these people or not?
And then everyone has a persona (well, not me - I'm a patron - but the players do), which makes it complicated, because instead of not knowing their name, 10 years and 100 dances later, I know too many of their names. I have one Faire acquaintance/Facebook friend who, at the Faire is either Mr. S, or B, but who, in real life, I know as J - although my "in real life" has never been in person, only via Facebook; oh, the irony. Then there's G, who calls himself Mr. H (I'm preserving their identities; blog readers may know - or BE - these people); and R, whose Faire name is Mr. U, very clever once I realized R and U were both antique typewriters. They are a curious group, these people. Some of them my partner and I have made up names for: there's the one we call Alexander the Great, who has a great head of hair, giant bouncy blond ringlets, and the one we call the Super Mr. Dancing Guy - he's hard to describe but you'd know him if you saw him....he once gave me a Blue Danube Waltz that I will never forget as long as I live, and the one that looks like my friend P.
There's all these people I know, even though I don't know them, and it's oddly entertaining. My partner and I enjoy talking about these characters, about the dynamics of the group, making observations and speculating on relationships and imagining funny behind-the-scenes action. That sounds weirdly stalker-like, but it's not like that - it's more like the fun Woody Allen style people watching + commentary, but just raised to the next level, of adding "over time" and that kind of makes it more fun and challenging. The Faire has routines, and it's funny and fun to watch everyone holding to them - to do it oneself. You get the sense of tradition, actual tradition. "Slap, bang, here we are again, here we are again" is a phrase we all have to sing during a particular silly polka mixer, and it's true. We all have that feeling, here we are again. It's the community thing - like the circlesing, like my company, like the M____ House. And God knows communities are scarce - you have to take them where you can find them.
Fortunately, there are many different and varied communities: the online ones, the in-person ones, the intermittent ones (like Dickens, which is every December; some altered version of "Same Time, Next Year" the 1975 play/1978 film of two people who have a long-standing affair of meeting just one weekend per year). The ones borne of blood, the ones borne by chance. Any way you can get one, I say, go for it, as long as the two of you are having a beneficial effect on each other.
I had a few very good dances today, and every very good dance is special - a lot of things have to come together: the music, the partner, the mood, the costumes, the level of crowd on the floor (you know, some leads are better with room, some leads are better with crowds, like a racehorse that prefers a muddy track to fine). When it works, it really feels like something is happening; when it comes together with a sense of finesse and artistic flourish, it's marvelous. Ending together - if you read this blog, you know I love that moment of musicians ending together: when the circlesing leader stops the circle on a dime, or when my silly little Bernal Heights String Quartet managed to time it so each note faded away at the exact same time. It can happen also with partner dancing, when the two of you end right on time. In tango, it's mandatory - you hear that end coming, and you better be ready for that final "da-DUM," or it's like not finishing your sexual act - lame and kind of rude.
It's less crucial in the waltz, but it's a very lovely live band that plays at the Faire (piano, flute, two violins) and they do have that classical music thing of hittting a final last chord with precision, and if you can get a partner who can time that final turn under the arm that ends with a bow and curtsey so perfectly that you both end right at the final chord - well, that's heaven. I had that happen once today.
And this is only Day One of the Dickens Faire! You locals should come check it out - even if you don't like it, you should at least try it because people who try it sometimes end up really liking it. And you don't want to miss it just in case you are one of them.
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