The Swedes know how to dance!
Jan. 16th, 2011 09:37 pmTonight I went out with
archinonlive to a local restaurant which has decided to experiment with inviting folk musicians in to play and let people dance if they will. I have no idea if it was a successes from the restaurant's perspective, but it sure was fun from mine! I already knew he could dance from the SCA event at which we met, and from a bit of playing around with dance in the narrow kitchen here at his apartment. But now I know that he can DANCE! I'd liked the bit of Swedish folk dancing I was exposed to by the Tasmanian Folk Federation dances, but they are even more fun with a partner who knows them. Tonight we did the: schottis, hambo, masurka, polska, vals and perhaps some others. They all involve enough spinning to make me happy (and boy am I glad I have my dancing skirt with me--that much spinning needs a skirt which keeps moving when one stops or changes direction!), and it is a joy to dance with someone who leads with such confidence that it doesn't matter that I didn't know the dances before we started. I really look forward to much more dancing with him--it is so much fun now I anticipate that it will be even better when I *know* his signals and can just dance, rather than doing some guessing as to what I am meant to be doing.
Sometimes he chose to join the other musicians and play the violin instead of dancing. For those dances I just danced on my own, combining elements from a variety of different dance forms that felt right at the moment. I received a few compliments on that, too.
Yesterday was also fun--one of his friends invited us round to roll up characters for a role playing game, Ironclaw, which game has one playing anthropomorphic animals as characters. I opted for a Lynx, which has the career of explorer. I think it will be interesting to play this game--it approaches the stats very differently from other games I've played. Instead of rolling the dice and assigning them to the various categories, one assigns a dice type to each category--one may distribute two d8's, three d6's, and one d4 to each category (body, mind, will, speed, species, and career). I gather that during the game we will then roll those sized dice depending on what needs doing. I'll keep you posted when I know more.
The good news about the gaming group (which did not surprise me at all) is that while I've never met any of these people before I felt instantly at home--his social circle is really very much the same as those I've had in other places, only the details of who is present are different. Have I mentioned that I am really enjoying being in Luleå?
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Sometimes he chose to join the other musicians and play the violin instead of dancing. For those dances I just danced on my own, combining elements from a variety of different dance forms that felt right at the moment. I received a few compliments on that, too.
Yesterday was also fun--one of his friends invited us round to roll up characters for a role playing game, Ironclaw, which game has one playing anthropomorphic animals as characters. I opted for a Lynx, which has the career of explorer. I think it will be interesting to play this game--it approaches the stats very differently from other games I've played. Instead of rolling the dice and assigning them to the various categories, one assigns a dice type to each category--one may distribute two d8's, three d6's, and one d4 to each category (body, mind, will, speed, species, and career). I gather that during the game we will then roll those sized dice depending on what needs doing. I'll keep you posted when I know more.
The good news about the gaming group (which did not surprise me at all) is that while I've never met any of these people before I felt instantly at home--his social circle is really very much the same as those I've had in other places, only the details of who is present are different. Have I mentioned that I am really enjoying being in Luleå?