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I arrived at Oakland's opulent Scottish Rite Temple promptly at 3:45 to take the pre-ball dance workshop in t-shirt, cotton yoga pants and my cheapass K-mart ballet flats.
We began breaking up into men only, women only to learn the basics of partnering. Once somebody actually EXPLAINED it to me, Gaius, it makes complete sense. It's exactly like rein contact on a horse - it has to be there constantly or it doesn't work. Hillary scolded me for thinking too hard when she demonstrated it with me . However, in 2 1/2 hours, we blew through waltz, schottiche, polka, mazurka, gallop and the Congress of Vienna. That's a LOT of information to be processed in a very short time. I was able to half schottiche, half walk, but I could not figure out a way to adapt the mazurka into something a little more low impact. The gallop was madness, but fortunately I was partnered with Tom, who teaches the beginner class for Friday Night waltz, and it was a lot of fun.
We broke at 6:15, which gave me enough time to run home through the raindrops, nuke and eat some Lean Cuisine, shower, dress and do my hair. It was raining pretty hard by the time I got back and found a parking spot, but I had time to have Merrin do up the back of my dress (I can't do those hooks by myself) and touch up my hair before the ball started.
Left to right, Kerry, Merrin and myself. Yes, the dress looks great, but six years later, I'm a better seamstress and there are things I would do differently. I think I still have the pattern in the bottom of my sewing box..... (EDIT. Yep. It's Simplicity Retro Costume Collection #9221, which I don't think they make any more.)
The dress code for Gaskell's
is semi-formal for pretty much any period. Gaskells gets a good number of SCA'ers and the Dickens Fair crowd, so there was a lot of REALLY good Victorian costume in evidence. Vivian looked darling in an emerald satin day dress (OK, Vivi would look darling in pretty much anything), but personally I can't see myself in Victorian. I just don't like it enough. You can see The Lederhosen Guy lurking in the gloom behind Kerry. Lots of men in tails, a sprinkling of kilts, lots of modern formal and semi formal wear. I don't recall that anyone else was in Regency, but I got a lot of compliments on mine.
Somewhere in the middle of the second waltz, I realized I was actually talking back to Jeremy and not feeling dizzy. It's not natural yet, I still have to think about where I'm putting my feet, but I seem to have made an advance of sorts. It probably also helps that there were so many dancers out on the floor that we had to keep our steps small and do a little balance step from time to time to avoid collisions. I got partners for most of the waltzes, opted out of the others (no point in trying to polka until I'm a little more solid on it). Of course, I did dance the first set of "Sir Roger de Coverley," being in Regency and all. And I got to do the Congress of Vienna waltz both times.
We began breaking up into men only, women only to learn the basics of partnering. Once somebody actually EXPLAINED it to me, Gaius, it makes complete sense. It's exactly like rein contact on a horse - it has to be there constantly or it doesn't work. Hillary scolded me for thinking too hard when she demonstrated it with me . However, in 2 1/2 hours, we blew through waltz, schottiche, polka, mazurka, gallop and the Congress of Vienna. That's a LOT of information to be processed in a very short time. I was able to half schottiche, half walk, but I could not figure out a way to adapt the mazurka into something a little more low impact. The gallop was madness, but fortunately I was partnered with Tom, who teaches the beginner class for Friday Night waltz, and it was a lot of fun.
We broke at 6:15, which gave me enough time to run home through the raindrops, nuke and eat some Lean Cuisine, shower, dress and do my hair. It was raining pretty hard by the time I got back and found a parking spot, but I had time to have Merrin do up the back of my dress (I can't do those hooks by myself) and touch up my hair before the ball started.
Left to right, Kerry, Merrin and myself. Yes, the dress looks great, but six years later, I'm a better seamstress and there are things I would do differently. I think I still have the pattern in the bottom of my sewing box..... (EDIT. Yep. It's Simplicity Retro Costume Collection #9221, which I don't think they make any more.)
The dress code for Gaskell's
is semi-formal for pretty much any period. Gaskells gets a good number of SCA'ers and the Dickens Fair crowd, so there was a lot of REALLY good Victorian costume in evidence. Vivian looked darling in an emerald satin day dress (OK, Vivi would look darling in pretty much anything), but personally I can't see myself in Victorian. I just don't like it enough. You can see The Lederhosen Guy lurking in the gloom behind Kerry. Lots of men in tails, a sprinkling of kilts, lots of modern formal and semi formal wear. I don't recall that anyone else was in Regency, but I got a lot of compliments on mine.
Somewhere in the middle of the second waltz, I realized I was actually talking back to Jeremy and not feeling dizzy. It's not natural yet, I still have to think about where I'm putting my feet, but I seem to have made an advance of sorts. It probably also helps that there were so many dancers out on the floor that we had to keep our steps small and do a little balance step from time to time to avoid collisions. I got partners for most of the waltzes, opted out of the others (no point in trying to polka until I'm a little more solid on it). Of course, I did dance the first set of "Sir Roger de Coverley," being in Regency and all. And I got to do the Congress of Vienna waltz both times.
