[Ansteorra] iso european dancers ??

[Charlene Charette]

On Tue, Feb 14, 2012 at 1:04 PM, Ld.blackmoon <ld.blackmoon at cox.net> wrote:

> and since there is no kingdom European dance competition, I have to assume
> that there is much less interest in that than there is in middle eastern
> dancing , for which there is a kingdom championship / title .
> are there any thoughts as to why this would be so ?
> is it based on what time and place your persona lived , so that others feel
> they can't participate without the " proper garb ?
> is it very hard to learn such courtly graces ?? ( especially if you were
> born with no rhythm and two left feet ? )
> is it the " shameful " public strutting between lord and lady ??


European dance popularity seems to wax and wane. I've seen a few
cycles of it in my 20+ years in the SCA. In the past, whenever dancers
got together to discuss promoting dance, competition was always far
down on the list. People like dancing and some like doing
performances, but the general feeling was they didn't care to compete.
If enough people wanted to do a competition, I'm sure we could find a
way to judge it and award a winner.

As far as difficulty goes... There are plenty of dances that are easy
to do. The easiest dances don't lend themselves to competition (not
"showy" enough). The dances needing more elaborate footwork take an
investment of time to learn to dance well enough to enter in a
competition. Not impossible, but it's can be difficult to get a group
of people together regularly to practice. The serious dancers have
always tended to be scattered around the kingdom.

--Perronnelle