Big Dance in Disguise

The theme this year was "Masquerade: Big Dance in Disguise," which was appropriate, given that holding it in Arrillaga rather than Roble made the whole thing very different from usual. Especially with only having one room for everything. But it was still fun. The performances were all very good, especially Swingtime and Decadance. I want to make sure to go to their spring shows this year. Lacey and I almost won the speed waltzing competition, but got tagged out for being just slightly too slow to catch one of the very last tempo changes. Phooey. Lacey also ended up sitting out a lot of the night later on because of her ankle, but I did get to dance a lot with Quena who came down from Davis, and that was fun. I had many other lovely dances with various people as well, including some folks I hadn't gotten to dance with for a long time. After learning the dawn mazurka last week, I never got around to reviewing it, so I snagged Eric's notes around 5 AM and tried to remember how it all went. I got through it by the skin of my teeth and thanks to various helpful set-mates. (There were 10 mazurka sets, a new record I think.) For the last waltz, Quena and I did a basket chair sort of thing with our arms and carried Lacey through the dance, which really worked surprisingly well. We did both right and left turn waltz, some lifts (bouncing Lacey up in the air a little bit), and even a very clumsy, lumpy jumping sort of thing for the redowa part of Erin's Shore. And we only had a few slight bumps with other people, probably no more than we would have had waltzing normally in that crowd. So it was moderately ridiculous but made us all happy. 212 people made it all the way through to 6 AM, and for me it was my 7th year in a row. We eventually got home and went to bed around the time my alarm would normally wake me up on weekdays. I eventually staggered awake around 2:30 this afternoon, and I'm going to take it pretty easy for what's left of the day.