Modern Western
May. 13th, 2026 12:03 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
sorcyressSo, I don't think I have a time note for the last time I was at Tech Squares. I know it was pre-2020, I think Austin and I went to two Easthills together, which probably would've been 2018 and 2019. I don't think we were regularly going to class when we did the latter of those. So yeah, it's been about eight years since I've been going remotely regularly, but Eric saw me at NEFFA and was all "so I'm running the class this semester and we haven't had a grand march in ages, I'd love to have them again".
It was a nice evening and I'm glad I went! I also think I'm gonna be pretty happy to go to tech squares twice a year for graduation and not any more often than that.
I'm thrilled that this random first-time-in-nearly-a-decade for me happened to coincide with Tenest's first-time-in-over-a-decade. Both of us have the calls still there, but it was fun to support each other through the squares, and do a little necessary flailing.
It was _really_ interesting to see what I did and didn't remember. I had dug out ~my~ graduation folder, with each week's call lists still dutifully tucked in order in there. (Somewhere I still have a little sticky note reading "you are perfect* *in attendance and other ways", from my own class folder). I didn't like. Fully read and internalize every single call, but I skimmed the names of all of them and tried to see what that triggered.
One of the things I really like about Squares is the patter of callbacks and call-actions, back and forth with Ted. "Spin the Top?!" we say, in increasingly histrionic tones, and he blithely replies "yeah, that's what I said, right?". Snap on trade by, toot-toot for track two, zoom is 02134, and it's oppa dixie style. I was _thrilled_ to hear someone say "like bunnies!" for a couples circulate, but I think I'm the only one who still has deeply locked-in spoonerisms for all the other circulations. JB gave me a hug after one of the tips, and said thank you for being someone else to chant "reduce, reuse" after a recycle.
(and I got exactly once where I was courtesy turning with a person I actually knew well enough to finish the callback for Chain Down the Line. Everyone present knew "catch me, turn me!" but only once could I actually add out loud "chain me down". That turns out to be a fun one!)
I like it so much because it helps ground the calls real well, keeps them in my memory. The fact that I was running at probably 80% accurate after eight years of not dancing is pretty damn good! And it's worth noting that my 80% at dance continues to be a lot stronger than average.
But I don't love that squares still doesn't feel like _dancing_ to me. I'm charmed by a new-to-me callback for one of the weird swoopy calls - "it flows!". Because that call does flow! All the calls flow! Ted especially makes the movements all flow into each other because he's very good at what he does! Now why doesn't the dance floor feel like they're doing that?
Some of it is the need of the floor to compound the challenges. Do the calls faster, weirder, harder. I would love Weave the Ring as a figure, if it weren't inevitably limping sideways to the beat. I don't mind making things more complicated, until they inevitably seem to remove some of the _dance_ from the dance form. Successfully snapswitching can be great fun, but what if it is interrupting your flow, or making you forget where you're going and who you've become?
I understand what I'm getting into when I go to the MIT activity, it's very smart hotshot college students who have always been The Best at everything they've ever done. I am extremely familiar with this batch of people, and am sometimes one myself.
But gosh, that's not exactly what social dancing is _for_. If you are so into the mega-complex puzzle versions of the thing that you can't find pleasure or joy in the simple version instead, that's...a way to do things. But it's not the way _I_ want to do things.
Give me hexes and snap switching, but also give me a solid singing tip and the space to move in. Do hard things badly, but also _do simple things well_.
See you in the fall for the next graduation, maybe!
~Sor
MOOP!
It was a nice evening and I'm glad I went! I also think I'm gonna be pretty happy to go to tech squares twice a year for graduation and not any more often than that.
I'm thrilled that this random first-time-in-nearly-a-decade for me happened to coincide with Tenest's first-time-in-over-a-decade. Both of us have the calls still there, but it was fun to support each other through the squares, and do a little necessary flailing.
It was _really_ interesting to see what I did and didn't remember. I had dug out ~my~ graduation folder, with each week's call lists still dutifully tucked in order in there. (Somewhere I still have a little sticky note reading "you are perfect* *in attendance and other ways", from my own class folder). I didn't like. Fully read and internalize every single call, but I skimmed the names of all of them and tried to see what that triggered.
One of the things I really like about Squares is the patter of callbacks and call-actions, back and forth with Ted. "Spin the Top?!" we say, in increasingly histrionic tones, and he blithely replies "yeah, that's what I said, right?". Snap on trade by, toot-toot for track two, zoom is 02134, and it's oppa dixie style. I was _thrilled_ to hear someone say "like bunnies!" for a couples circulate, but I think I'm the only one who still has deeply locked-in spoonerisms for all the other circulations. JB gave me a hug after one of the tips, and said thank you for being someone else to chant "reduce, reuse" after a recycle.
(and I got exactly once where I was courtesy turning with a person I actually knew well enough to finish the callback for Chain Down the Line. Everyone present knew "catch me, turn me!" but only once could I actually add out loud "chain me down". That turns out to be a fun one!)
I like it so much because it helps ground the calls real well, keeps them in my memory. The fact that I was running at probably 80% accurate after eight years of not dancing is pretty damn good! And it's worth noting that my 80% at dance continues to be a lot stronger than average.
But I don't love that squares still doesn't feel like _dancing_ to me. I'm charmed by a new-to-me callback for one of the weird swoopy calls - "it flows!". Because that call does flow! All the calls flow! Ted especially makes the movements all flow into each other because he's very good at what he does! Now why doesn't the dance floor feel like they're doing that?
Some of it is the need of the floor to compound the challenges. Do the calls faster, weirder, harder. I would love Weave the Ring as a figure, if it weren't inevitably limping sideways to the beat. I don't mind making things more complicated, until they inevitably seem to remove some of the _dance_ from the dance form. Successfully snapswitching can be great fun, but what if it is interrupting your flow, or making you forget where you're going and who you've become?
I understand what I'm getting into when I go to the MIT activity, it's very smart hotshot college students who have always been The Best at everything they've ever done. I am extremely familiar with this batch of people, and am sometimes one myself.
But gosh, that's not exactly what social dancing is _for_. If you are so into the mega-complex puzzle versions of the thing that you can't find pleasure or joy in the simple version instead, that's...a way to do things. But it's not the way _I_ want to do things.
Give me hexes and snap switching, but also give me a solid singing tip and the space to move in. Do hard things badly, but also _do simple things well_.
See you in the fall for the next graduation, maybe!
~Sor
MOOP!
no subject
on 2026-05-13 01:33 pm (UTC)I do love a Grand March, though. I remember some at Arisia as part of the Commonwealth Vintage dancers session.
no subject
on 2026-05-13 03:39 pm (UTC)Some of it is the need of the floor to compound the challenges. Do the calls faster, weirder, harder.
*nodnod* Perhaps unsurprisingly, I think of this sort of thing as "the DDR dynamic".1
Dance Dance Revolution can be done as a dance,2 where there's an intent and flow of full-body movement rather than the focused, impressive-but-not-exactly-*graceful* efficacy of "hit buttons with feet".3
But it nearly never is, because of the focus required to succeed at the technical aspects – which are framed as the purpose of play, for which the game provides immediate feedback on whether they were done well or poorly. Grace, elegance, beauty, poise, emotiveness, feeling - none of these keep the player alive when the life meter drops to 0, and external feedback requires someone hanging around observing.
(All of this compounded by the underlying game being designed as "steps are a foot dexterity challenge", with body-feel / "interesting steps" definitely being considered, but it doesn't seem to be going for "steps are a constraint that pushes players towards interesting dance"? The mode where one player is using 2 mats side-by-side creates more danceable arrangements, IMO, but I don't think that was the *point* of it.)
1 I almost called it "the DDR problem", but it's really only a problem if the results are a mismatch with one's desires?
2 I've seen it done well. I've done it myself, not as well, at very low difficulties.
no subject
on 2026-05-13 03:40 pm (UTC)3 Which, having taken a bunch of post-modern dance in college, I will defend as being something that could be a dance, but it usually *isn't* done as one, and... hey, thinking about this question through Gil Hova's "player in 3 persons" game-design lens4 provides useful vocabulary to talk about "when is DDR dance?"
4 TL;DR since I can't find a link: when someone plays a game they are 3 people simultaneously: Player (meatspace human), Avatar (in-fiction representation), and Agent (mechanical representation). You can tell stories about any of these 3 domains - "I laughed with Ellen" / "Seraph barely beat down the Treant" / "I rolled all 5s and healed 5 life". I suspect I think that DDR is dance when a Player's expression is a considered factor in how they move, particularly if it's prioritized over Agential goals. Or some approximation of that.
[slightly chagrined at blathering, but it's the intersection of dance and game theory, so I am not super surprised at doing so]