BackAwareness and Consideration



Are you aware of your partner as you dance?  Or could it just be a sack of potatoes on the end of your arm?  And the other people in the set — do you realise you're all dancing together socially?  When you dance a reel of three (hey), do you look at the other people you pass — or are they just moving objects that you have to navigate round?  It annoys me when it's “First corners set and turn single, and a two-hand turn” and the woman stares at the floor the whole time, or over my shoulder.  I might say “Smile at me” — and then perhaps she does, but sometimes she's really taken aback, as if a waxwork at Madame Tussauds had suddenly tapped her on the shoulder, and I can feel her thinking: “What a nerve — who does he think he is?  He's not the caller — he can't tell me what to do!”  Even when I am the caller and tell people to smile at each other, some of them quite obviously resent it.  Smiling changes it from a mechanical activity into an interaction with other human beings — and a lot of advanced dancers don't want that.  I remember the leader of a “Playford” Club saying something about socialising, and one woman remarking in disgust: “I don't come here to socialise — I come here to dance!”

Scottish dancers are much better at smiling and looking at each other: they're aware of the other five members of the set.  Watch them doing rights and lefts.  And when the working couple separate and dance reels of three with the other two couples, not only do they look at people in their own reel, they're also aware of their own partner, and may touch hands as they pass.

Look at your partner.  Look diagonally right, and left.  Now look at your neighbour.  Does this embarrass you?  Why?  Perhaps it's not a very British thing to do — but you're not standing in a bus queue; you're dancing together.  On the other hand, beware the fixed Playford grin: that can be awful too.