Hyperreal

As promised, here’s my take on the weekend as a whole… I’d like to keep this fairly objective, but so much of the things I’m going to talk about are solely my personal experience, and I can’t help being subjective…

The main thing to take away from this is I had a fantastic time, loads of positives, and hardly any negatives.

Let’s start with some negatives…

• Missing people. I realised that I didn’t manage to meet everyone I’d have liked to. (Some sort of badge for everyone would have been useful.) I’m not great mixing in crowds though, and most people I met either introduced themselves to me or were pointed out. Sorry about that – I should try harder. At the same time, there were quite a few people who for one reason or another couldn’t make it. Missed you even more.
• Lack of stamina. For whatever reason I spent a lot of the weekend feeling rather ill. I hope it’s just because I haven’t recovered fully from being ill a week or so ago. Still feeling a bit under the weather. Anyway, for this reason I didn’t manage to dance as much as I’d have liked, or do all the workshops I wanted to.
• When you combine the previous two problems it meant I wasn’t able to spend as much time with our visitors as I’d liked.
• Fire alarm. Not a biggy, but it was a unfortunate end to an otherwise perfect night.
• Loud bouncers kicking us out at 1 am, even though the building doesn’t close until 2 am. I wonder if they do this for wedding receptions and the like too?

OK, we’ve got that out of the way… Everything else was OK, good, great, fantastic, fabulous or quite simply awesome. Particular memories for me…

• Doing the Double Trouble workshop with identical twins. I also had one of my best dances of the weekend with one of them on Saturday night. (Don’t ask me which one!!) It wasn’t because it was slow and sexy… in fact it was fast and frenzied. But I felt that it was at high point in my dancing over the weekend.
• Double Trouble in freestyle. Managed this twice, once with fairly experienced DT’ers and once with novices. In some ways DT is a lot easier than you think it’ll be – it’s still pretty tricky and I did mess up loads – but it was great fun!
• Had a few dances as a follower – including one where my partner and I stole the lead back and forward from each other a couple of times. Also had a wee go at double trouble following. So much fun!
• Dancing with friends. Ultimately always more satisfying than a three minute fling with a stranger.
• So many lovely women from all over the UK, so many of whom already knew me and wanted to dance with me!

My dancing… I’ve said it in previous posts… just being exposed to so many great dancers, watching them dance and dancing with them, has, I feel, helped my dancing so much. While at times I was a bit down with my dancing, feeling that I’m repeating moves too much, I also think I’m on the edge of a new wave of discovery and I’m really looking forward to seeing what will develop from everything I have hopefully absorbed over the weekend.

(Oh, but my following still stinks rotten eggs. )

Let’s talk about the venue… Even though I’ve been going pretty much every week to the GUU to dance since February, I was surprised and how well it presented itself on the night. I was especially surprised at the reading room (blues room) which had had a make-over since the last time I’d been there when it was a bit run down. I think they had fixed the floor and making the place a lot more presentable.

In fact, I think they must have spent time preparing all the rooms as all three rooms had clean solid floors, a bit fast for some people’s liking, but they suited me very well. I never realised that there was a Subway in the GUU before, which was handy… Shame that they and the vending machine ran out of bottled water so early on.

When it was first announced that the BFG was going to be at the GUU I was worried that it would let us down, but I think it put in a good showing, and I’m proud to say that it is my home venue, and that I dance there as often as I can.

I also think that Ceroc Scotland put on a good showing. At the beginning of this month I talked about how the local LeRoc organisers made an impressive show at their monthly party, with better lighting, banners and lots of fans. Well compared to previous monthly parties, Ceroc did much better, lots of fans, better lighting… I hope it continues in the future.

Music… I’m not going to repeat myself about my musical tastes, and what I like to dance to… It was nice though to experience different DJs to what I’m used to, playing music that was not so familiar… Sometimes it was a challenge, but it was usually a pleasant one.

On Sunday night the set after midnight was very bluesy which I’m not good with and I wasn’t much in the mood to dance anyway… When I did though, I found that with some of these slower tracks, you can hardly hear where the beat is… It’s disconcerting dancing to music and feeling you’re in time with it, but not actually being able to consciously verify it to yourself.

That was a puzzle.

Now on a more general theme… one curious thing I noticed, that seems to be true in all aspects of life, but that I’ve never thought about before is that in any situation like the BFG, there seems to be, even though we’re all adults, a group of people you could call the grown-ups and others you could call the kids. It’s hard to quantify exactly what the difference is, it’s more a feeling. Perhaps it’s something to do with responsibility, or maturity… I’m sure also, that if anyone else thinks this observation is at all valid that they would probably have their own cut-off mark which would differ from mine.

Anyway, for most of the weekend I felt like a kid playing amongst grown-ups. Only occasionally did I feel like a grown-up, typically when people were coming to me asking for my knowledge or experience.

I’m not saying that feeling child-like or mature is good or bad, or that you’d want to be one and not the other. I just found it an intriguing thought.

That said, amongst the adults this weekend were Franck, Sheena, and all the teachers, DJs and helpers they had brought together. Everything ran very smoothly, I got lots out of all the workshops I attended and the music was top-notch. And it was such great value too!

Can I talk about the people I met now?

As is the way, (especially for anti-social men like me), at events like these the girls meet everyone while the guys just meet the girls. I hardly exchanged more than a few sentences with any other bloke during the whole weekend, and I’m not sure if I properly met any guys I didn’t already know. Sorry.

But I did meet folks from all over… From as far as Devon, Somerset, and all that part of world to the south, to Inverness and Aberdeen in the north, with Manchester and Northampton in the middle, and Northern Ireland out to the west a bit (hmm, is this post turning into a geography lesson??) I especially enjoyed meeting and dancing with three forum sofa sitters from London. Lovely ladies… (Not at all like they come across on the forum! )

I don’t normally mention names, but I was especially pleased to meet and dance with Lory and Minnie. Even though I managed 3rd place in the “Forum Star” award category (for new forumites), these two ladies are both true stars of the forum, way, way above me.

I really enjoyed meeting so many forumites, and dancing with as many as I could. It’ll be good to be able to actually know the person behind the avatar when I read their posts in the future.

Lastly, I had great pleasure dancing with all the Scottish ladies that were there. I’d just like to re-iterate that Aberdeen has the most welcoming, Dundee/Perth the most fun, and Edinburgh the best looking girls. (Oh, except of course for the Glasgow girls who are simply the best! )

There’s probably so much I’ve forgotten to say. But I should get to my bed… I have just one piece of advice, from Teddy Roosevelt, US president in the early 1900s…

“Lead softly, and carry a big bag of chocolate.”

(Just one last thing… You are a good friend. )