Dancing and dragons
Oct. 10th, 2005 08:04 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
ladyofastolatIt's AGM season at the moment. At the Men's AGM, Pellinor was once again elected Squire. I'm still Squire of the Girls, following our AGM last week. And tonight it's the AGM of the mixed side, MBD. Pellinor's currently Foreman, but he's had his two years', so we'll see what happens tonight.
What is certain is that I'll be taking Minutes. At the first ever AGM of the new side, some 5 or 6 years ago, I volunteered... and I now have the job in perpetuity. I believe that the Minutes of a recreational group should be literate, detailed and amusing. Funny asides, double entendres, and digressions will be minuted. I want Minutes to be something people actually look forward to reading. I want people to find them in ten years' times, and go, "Ooh!" in excitement, before settling down to read every word, chuckling, and saying, "I remember that!"
And, apparently, I'm successful, since I now have the job for life, both for MBD and the Girls.
Most years, I have lots of ideas for new dances in my head, but don't get round to writing them properly before the start of the practice season, so Saturday night became the "drink and dancing" night. We played every dance tune we could find in our CD collection, and tried to write some dances.
I started off by completing a dance I started some months ago, which is a vaguely Border-style dance to the song, John Barleycorn. The moves are vaguely inspired by the words, but not, I hope, in a tacky way. But I couldn't resist some low clashing during the "they hired men with scythes so sharp to cut him off at the knee" bit, or a waist-hold turn during the "they bound him around the waist", or an inter-locking "mill wheel" sort of move when the song sings about the miller grinding him between two stones.
I have some ideas for a dance to the tune Grand Mourisque, but am a bit wary. Last year, I wrote a dance to the tune "Belle que tiens ma vie", which, in my mind, was a "Molly pavane" - i.e. a cross between a Molly dance (in the Seven Champions style) and a pavane. The result was never really how I'd imagined it, and I want to ditch that dance completely, but I still want to write a "Molly pavane" that works - hence the "Grand Mourisque" inspiration. But I fear that it, too, wouldn't end up how I would like it be, for the same reasons.
I would also like to write a vaguely Molly-style dance (this time in the more exuberent form of Molly, not the rigid Seven Champions style) to the tune "Sweet Jenny Jones," but since "Sweet Jenny Jones" is a Black Book Cotswold dance, I think I need to check with the Morris Ring purists amongst the Men, to see if they mind.
Anyway... Last night was D&D. We now have a cleric, since a new player joined in. This is good, since we were half dead from fighting zombies. Unforunately, he's a cleric who thinks that pain is a learning experience, so he won't actually heal anyone. *sigh* Why am I not surprised? I've never yet done any role-playing in which we worked together as a smoothly oiled team, rather than bickering madly, trying to betray each other, and deserting each other in their time of need.
(Honestly leads me to admit that by far the most serious wound to our party was caused by my paladin rolling a critical fumble, and landing a wighty wallop on one of his companions. Oops. The only good part of it was that it set an example to the zombies, since the nearest zombie immediately did exactly the same, and killed one of its friends.)
What is certain is that I'll be taking Minutes. At the first ever AGM of the new side, some 5 or 6 years ago, I volunteered... and I now have the job in perpetuity. I believe that the Minutes of a recreational group should be literate, detailed and amusing. Funny asides, double entendres, and digressions will be minuted. I want Minutes to be something people actually look forward to reading. I want people to find them in ten years' times, and go, "Ooh!" in excitement, before settling down to read every word, chuckling, and saying, "I remember that!"
And, apparently, I'm successful, since I now have the job for life, both for MBD and the Girls.
Most years, I have lots of ideas for new dances in my head, but don't get round to writing them properly before the start of the practice season, so Saturday night became the "drink and dancing" night. We played every dance tune we could find in our CD collection, and tried to write some dances.
I started off by completing a dance I started some months ago, which is a vaguely Border-style dance to the song, John Barleycorn. The moves are vaguely inspired by the words, but not, I hope, in a tacky way. But I couldn't resist some low clashing during the "they hired men with scythes so sharp to cut him off at the knee" bit, or a waist-hold turn during the "they bound him around the waist", or an inter-locking "mill wheel" sort of move when the song sings about the miller grinding him between two stones.
I have some ideas for a dance to the tune Grand Mourisque, but am a bit wary. Last year, I wrote a dance to the tune "Belle que tiens ma vie", which, in my mind, was a "Molly pavane" - i.e. a cross between a Molly dance (in the Seven Champions style) and a pavane. The result was never really how I'd imagined it, and I want to ditch that dance completely, but I still want to write a "Molly pavane" that works - hence the "Grand Mourisque" inspiration. But I fear that it, too, wouldn't end up how I would like it be, for the same reasons.
I would also like to write a vaguely Molly-style dance (this time in the more exuberent form of Molly, not the rigid Seven Champions style) to the tune "Sweet Jenny Jones," but since "Sweet Jenny Jones" is a Black Book Cotswold dance, I think I need to check with the Morris Ring purists amongst the Men, to see if they mind.
Anyway... Last night was D&D. We now have a cleric, since a new player joined in. This is good, since we were half dead from fighting zombies. Unforunately, he's a cleric who thinks that pain is a learning experience, so he won't actually heal anyone. *sigh* Why am I not surprised? I've never yet done any role-playing in which we worked together as a smoothly oiled team, rather than bickering madly, trying to betray each other, and deserting each other in their time of need.
(Honestly leads me to admit that by far the most serious wound to our party was caused by my paladin rolling a critical fumble, and landing a wighty wallop on one of his companions. Oops. The only good part of it was that it set an example to the zombies, since the nearest zombie immediately did exactly the same, and killed one of its friends.)
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no subject
Date: 2005-10-10 10:46 am (UTC)Hmmm.
Um, I'll be preparing my own food and drink for a while, if that's OK. And I seem to have developed a bit of a nervous twitch, so you're probably best not walking anywhere behind me.
no subject
Date: 2005-10-10 06:50 pm (UTC)2 overlapping stars?
a "Molly pavane"
Sounds interesting, how did it go?
no subject
Date: 2005-10-11 06:32 am (UTC)The "Molly pavane" never quite went how I wanted it to go. I had a rather amorphous idea of what it would be like, but the dance I ended up writing never really matched it.
It's hard to describe. A pavane tune. Lots of slow, deliberate moves. A stately feel to it. Vaguely Morris-y moves, but done to a pavane-y sort of step, and with slow, stately military precision. That was one of the main problems with it, since some of the moves required dancers to cover more ground than they could do to a slow step, so they had to speed up, and the dance lost its distinctive style.