Take Me Out to the Ball

I wish we could do this every Friday night.

Dancing for three hours with the love of my life, surrounded by courtesy, chivalry, gentleness and joy, working up a sweat (perhaps that should be a glow) as we learn new steps in old dances, amongst sweet friends and fancy dresses. Here's what we danced tonight at the homeschool family Civil War era ball:

- the Gay Gordon
- Colin McBain's Reel
- the Golden Slipper (a cotillion)
- the Netherfield (apparently the reel seen in the movie "Pride and Prejudice")
- the Gay Gordon as a fast jig
- In, Out and Across
- Lovers' Waltz

Some of the dances involve switching partners constantly, others keep the original partners together. The Gay Gordon and "In, Out and Across" require the entire room of 200 or so people to form an enormous circle (or an outer and inner circle, sometimes even three of them), while the reels call for three to seven couples to face each other. The cotillion needs four couples facing inwards in a square, and of course the waltz involves individual couples. We enjoy all of the variations because it is fun to meet new people, talk with old friends, and to end up back together again, and it is even more fun to stay together in the first place.

The boys learn properly how to ask a lady to dance and how to escort her back to her family after the dance. The whole thing is a fun, romantic, safe, pretty, joyful occasion. It feels like another world from the one we are usually in.

Take me out to the ball again soon!

(hi Doug and Mary! :-)