aroraborealis

Well, that was awesome.

Today was dilletante's and my blindfolded ballroom experiment (take 1), and it was a lot of fun, I thought! And our guinea pigsattendees seemed to think so, too. You can read dilletante's comments and observations here. Attendees should feel free to comment here, there, or in email.

My hope was that it would be interesting and useful enough that people would want to come back a second time when we knew more about what might work and not work, and I'd say we definitely achieved that! I had a ton of fun, was pleased with how our exercises and the general shape of the workshop went, and we have lots of ideas about how to do it next time.

Stay tuned for future dates.

Hey! Want to be a guinea pig for a dance-and-sense-based experiment? Join me and dilletante for a Blindfolded Ballroom workshop. It's just what it sounds like, and we've never done it before, so it will be a learning experience for everyone. If it's successful (which is to say, if it's interesting), we'll almost certainly do another, but it's too soon to make promises.

You don't need ballroom experience, just a willingness to play in your body and experiment with a partner in a dance context. You don't need to bring a partner; we'll probably be switching people up over the course of the workshop.

This will be November 1, 1:30-2:30 PM in studio 5 some other time/date at the Dance Complex in Cambridge. RSVPs would be greatly appreciated, and if you have ballroom experience, a note about that in your RSVP may help us in our planning.

Yay!

The next blind dance will be Sunday, August 19, 10:30am - 1pm at the Dance Complex in Central Square (536 Mass Ave, Cambridge). We will be in Studio 1.

As always, this is open to friends and friends of friends, so feel free to spread the word. Kids are welcome if they are old/big enough to have their own experience here, or if they are supervised so they don't become hazardous to dancers who can't see them.

I suggest you wear clothing that's comfortable for dancing, which will include any movement you like, up to and including rolling around on the floor. No shoes are allowed in the studio! You might also like to have a snack or water with you. I will have spare blindfolds and handkerchiefs, but if you have one you like, bringing it is a good idea, too.

As ever, I would love to know ahead of time approximately how many people to expect. If you know you'll be there, please let me know!

If you have music that you think would be good for this, I will happily take suggestions or potential contributions to the playlist!

[FAQ: What is this? A blind dance is a dancing event where dancers wear blindfolds as a way to change their experience of dancing. Depending on the level of spotting -- which will vary based on who and how many people are at any given event -- there will be one or more spotters who aren't blindfolded and will keep an eye on things. If you want to attend to dance or spot or both, you're welcome.]

The next blind dance will be Sunday, June 3, 10:30am - 1pm at the Dance Complex in Central Square (536 Mass Ave, Cambridge). We will be in Studio 1.

As always, this is open to friends and friends of friends, so feel free to spread the word. Kids are welcome if they are old/big enough to have their own experience here, or if they are supervised so they don't become hazardous to dancers who can't see them.

I suggest you wear clothing that's comfortable for dancing, which will include any movement you like, up to and including rolling around on the floor. No shoes are allowed in the studio! You might also like to have a snack or water with you. I will have spare blindfolds and handkerchiefs, but if you have one you like, bringing it is a good idea, too.

As ever, I would love to know ahead of time approximately how many people to expect. If you know you'll be there, please let me know!

If you have music that you think would be good for this, I will happily take suggestions or potential contributions to the playlist!

[FAQ: What is this? A blind dance is a dancing event where dancers wear blindfolds as a way to change their experience of dancing. Depending on the level of spotting -- which will vary based on who and how many people are at any given event -- there will be one or more spotters who aren't blindfolded and will keep an eye on things. If you want to attend to dance or spot or both, you're welcome.]

From this post:

The next blind dance will be Sunday, April 8, 10:30am - 1pm at the Dance Complex in Central Square (536 Mass Ave, Cambridge). We will be in Studio 1.

As always, this is open to friends and friends of friends, so feel free to spread the word. Kids are welcome if they are old/big enough to have their own experience here, or if they are supervised so they don't become hazardous to dancers who can't see them.

I suggest you wear clothing that's comfortable for dancing, which will include any movement you like, up to and including rolling around on the floor. No shoes are allowed in the studio! You might also like to have a snack or water with you. I will have spare blindfolds and handkerchiefs, but if you have one you like, bringing it is a good idea, too.

As ever, I would love to know ahead of time approximately how many people to expect. If you know you'll be there, please let me know!

If you have music that you think would be good for this, I will happily take suggestions or potential contributions to the playlist!

[ETA: What is this? A blind dance is a dancing event where dancers wear blindfolds as a way to change their experience of dancing. Depending on the level of spotting -- which will vary based on who and how many people are at any given event -- there will be one or more spotters who aren't blindfolded and will keep an eye on things. If you want to attend to dance or spot or both, you're welcome.]

This is a question for people who have been to one of my blind dances or another blind dance or who have opinions about music or who just have opinions that apply to the question:

One of my biggest challenges for the blind dances is coming up with the music, especially because, as rule30 commented to me the other day, it's not that I'm not used to shaping people's experiences of an event, but that I'm not used to doing so through music. So this is an interesting element for me.

I have been avoiding music with lyrics, and I wonder if people agree that that's the way to go? I've also been trying to have pieces that are on the longer side, though yesterday one of the pieces in the set I danced was just over 3 minutes, and that didn't seem excessively short, so that's a useful data point. I also started out with kind of "new agey" feeling stuff, but yesterday I mixed in a bit of (slightly) thumpier, jazzier, more modern sounding songs, and those seemed to work well, too.

So, thoughts on music? In particular: lyrics or no lyrics? What about lyrics in a foreign language or non-lyric-y vocals? Tempo: should it be fast, slow, varied? Length of songs: longer? shorter? mixed? Style? Other opinions?

Also, thanks to spike, redjo and fennel for providing me with a bunch of tracks to play with -- I owe each of you a run-down on my reactions at some point soon. Other folks: if you have music you think might be good for this, I'm all ears!

This is a reminder!

The next blind dance will be this Sunday, March 11, 3pm-5pm at the Dance Complex in Central Square (536 Mass Ave, Cambridge). We will be in Studio 1.

Like last time, this is open to friends and friends of friends, so feel free to spread the word. Kids are welcome if they are old/big enough to have their own experience here, or if they are supervised so they don't become hazardous to dancers who can't see them.

I suggest you wear clothing that's comfortable for dancing, which will include any movement you like, up to and including rolling around on the floor. No shoes are allowed in the studio! You might also like to have a snack or water with you.

As ever, I would love to know ahead of time approximately how many people to expect. If you know you'll be there, please let me know! If you have told me in another electronic forum, you don't need to tell me again unless you want to, but if you've only said yes in person, I may not remember.

If you have music that you think would be good for this, I will happily take suggestions or potential contributions to the playlist!

So, I organized a blind dance, and some people came! I'll do a lot of comparing between today's dance and the twilight one, here:

I was looking at today's dance as a) an opportunity to share my blindfolded dancing experience with friends, b) a chance to see what it's like to be not-a-dancer at such an event and c) learn what works and what doesn't at such a thing.

Overall, I feel like the dance was a success. It was so different from the context of my blindfolded dance at twilight that I actually don't feel like I came close to sharing my experience, interestingly. But in the differences are a lot of really useful tidbits for future dances, and I expect to put this sort of thing together again, since it was very low-effort on my part (other than creating the musical playlist, which was an interesting challenge for me!)

I decided to spot today, in part because I was curious to see what that's like, and in part because I wanted to be in a more analytical space about it than I would have been if I'd been dancing. dancingwolfgrrl gave a quick overview of some of what's involved in spotting beforehand, and some of the other stuff, I picked up while watching her once the dance started.

The most interesting, fascinating and fun piece was, essentially, moving people with my mind. That is, people were dancing around blindfolded, and there were objects and other people in the room, and we were trying to avoid any collisions. So when someone got close to a wall or to another person, dancingwolfgrrl (and later, I or other spotters) would stand between the person and the obstacle and make a wall with her hands or make a shooing motion or a pushing motion, and about 90% of the time, this led the person to move in the indicated direction. This was really way too much fun, and also interesting, and, looking back at twilight, it makes me think that all the times I thought I was getting close to someone, I probably was.

This meant that there was very little interaction between dancers today, which several folks commented that they missed, and it's part of what made today different from the twilight dance, where we did occasionally brush against each other or end up dancing together for a time (I didn't do that, but the rest of my clan did).

I see a place for both forms in future dances. Because of the high intervention spotting today, people were able to make faster, bigger movements than I would have considered making at the other dance. On the other hand, it meant less interaction between dancers and a greater sense of being observed (the sense of being really alone was something I liked at a lot at the dance at twilight.) Since I didn't particularly know about that different, I wouldn't have thought to make it explicit, but I envision being more clear about the level of spotting and what people can expect on that front at future dances, because there are definite plusses to each.

In general, people seemed to like the music with a beat more than the floatier stuff, but there was some suggestion that in more contact-y dancing, the floaty stuff might work well, and certainly, the music with a beat tended to make people move faster. Though, as I think about it, all the music with a beat was faster than the floaty stuff, so maybe I just need to find music with a slower beat.

Folks who came: I'd very much like to hear any other thoughts or observations you might have about what worked/what didn't, things you'd like to see in the future, etc. Was there enough time? Too much? We danced for an hour; would it be useful to dance for 45 minutes, take a 15 minute break and then dance another 45? (This might be a way to have both interventionist and non-interventionist spotting in one event.)

Folks who are interested in future blind dances: Are weekends or weekday evenings preferable? I'm thinking about making this a once-a-month thing for a few months to see how that works.