JWG

As a part of our Road Scholar trip to Southern Africa we went to lunch at a restaurant, Mzansi, in Langa, one of the neighborhoods in Cape Town that was designated as a place to move black people during the apartheid regime to make way for white people in other sections of the city.

At the end of the meal the owner and operator, Nomonde Siyaka, gave a fascinating talk about the history of the place. It was originally a very small house in whch her family lived in extremely crowded conditions.

The food was excellent - it is rated #1 in Cape Town on TripAdvisor - clearly for both the food and the experience.

There were marimba players in the front of the restaurant entertaining us and at the end they were quite loud and everyone joined in dancing.

This weekend we went to the Flurry Festival in Saratoga Springs (our 5th time). It is a huge event with lots of Contra dancing, some English Country dancing, and lots of other folkie activities - I noticed in the schedudle that there were sometimes as many as 15 parallel sessions.

We did mostly Contra Dancing - just one session of English - partly because it was in another building almost a 1/2 mile away so between changing clothes/shoes, walking, etc. going there is time consuming and we'd miss at least one good Contra Dancing session - we went to essentially all of them. Didn't dance every dance - my feet need a bit of rest so I skipped a few. I did register 32,787 steps on Saturday, beating last year's record of 28,887.

In the main dance hall there are often at least 600 dancers dancing in a synchroized fashion and in one over-crowded session it is estimated there were over 1,000!

It is a pretty amazing experience - and I think a quite unique and interesting sociological situation. There is good music - quite a few different bands with various instrument combinations - playing familar tunes with lots of improvisation. Good exercise (physical and mental - coordinated) in a room full of smiling people all having a delightful time. A lot of dancing friends were there plus many recognizable people from other dances.

And where else can you be in a crowd of so many people of all genders and ages touching each other with no ulterior motives? And you get to ask conplete strangers to dance and have a nice time with them. For those who don't know: in Contra and English Country dancing for each ~12 minute dance you choose a partner, but interact and dance with them and with neighbors as you progress up or down the line.

In traditional Contra Dancing and English Country dancing there are two roles: Ladies and Gents. In our home dance in Jamaica Plain we haven't used that terminology for 30 years - but these days lots of other dances are beginning to convert and at the Flurry there were several sessions that used Larks and Robins. Many people were wearing I Dance BOTH Role buttons: And it is common at the beginning of each dance to ask your partner which role they wanted to dance and there were many same-gender couples or people dancing the opposite role - definitely more than last year.