Sunday, October 26, 2003

Hallowe'en Contra

My plan with the candy corn costume was to not tell anybody what it was, as an experiment in seeing how many people think like I do. Only one person guessed it right away, a few got it pretty quickly, and some never figured it out (though I told them at the end of the dance). The erroneous guesses were headed collectively by pumpkins and several varieties of squash, with an escaped convict as a close second, and construction workers and garbage men bringing up the rear. Oh well.

This being my first time at the Hallowe'en contra, I was introduced to the traditional Ron Award for best costume. I had heard of this award but I never knew the reason for its name, which is that Ron wins it hands down every year. This year his costume was a skeleton that was about 10 or 11 feet tall. Ron wore a large frame strapped to his back that supported the rib cage of the skeleton, and attached the oversized hands to his own to control them. The bones were foam, I think, to make it lighter and more dance-friendly, but he hung wood chimes inside the rib cage to make it rattle. The head tilted down a little bit and rotated around as he moved, which during the dances gave it the look of a somewhat bemused giant among midgets. It was wonderful.

The Hillbillies from Mars played a bunch of great music, as usual. The unquestionable highlight, though, was the polka they played right before the last waltz: the theme from Indiana Jones. It made an amazing polka, but the hemiolas in the A part confused the heck out of me until I realized we could do a fast zweifacher to it. It was waltz-waltz-pivot all through the A part and then all polkas for the B part. Wow. I have got to dance to that again sometime.

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