Contra-diction

It's sometimes difficult at Tuesday night contra dancing at MIT to remember in the midst of the swirling and twirling whether you're a leader or a follower, someone in the 'gents' role or the 'ladies'. If you forget, as I did on occasion, you reach out for the wrong person, swing him or her, and realize that your partner and partner of the person you've just spun around are looking at each other not quite sure what to do.

But the music (live: a fiddle, banjo and piano) keeps on, the caller announces each step as it comes up, you figure out (are sometimes nudged to) where you're supposed to be and the recurrent sequence begins again. After a few iterations, you and your partner are at the top or the bottom of the line, whereupon you switch sides and wait to be pulled back into the machinery of the moves.

It was a hot and humid night; everybody was sweating. As we circled clockwise, then counterclockwise, allemanded, balanced, promenaded, hayed, gipsied (eyes locked) and swung with partner, corner, partner, new corner, I was with tall boney-backed young men, short solid older women, short muscular older men, limber-backed young women, holding their hands, gripping their shoulder blades, looking them in the eye, you, now you, now you, in succession--but not too much attention to any particular others, except one's partner, because there's always the next move to be ready for and step into.

Dancing (the caller called it 'wasting time to music') is kinesthetic, tactile, and mental. Head to foot, I was engaged. When the music ended, we clapped and sought new partners; too few women, so two guys who agree to dance have to settle who's leader, who's follower, hence which side to stand on as the music begins.

The sets end with plaintive Irish-type waltzes danced by circled couples one-two-three-ing around the small open floor, a change of pace from the bouncy beats of the contra tunes.

I saw all of you guys last in May (just before the person at the welcome table went for hip surgery (up and down recovery but can't stop dancing)) and this is my first and last time to dance because starting next week, I won't see you again until December. All that time, you'll be practicing the familiar elements put together in new dance configurations regularly concocted by musicians and callers from around the country. You'll be enjoying the rueful humor of mistakes, as well as the red-cheeked exhilaration of feeling your and another's bodies together sketching, with smooth momentum, ornate designs in the air, on the floor--and I'll miss it.