Playford Ball

I had a great time this year at the Playford Ball! My friend Julia came down from Wisconsin, complete with her regal ball gown and a few girly accessories for me! We bought some costume gloves in town, though decided soon afterwards that a slightly finer material and craftsmanship would be worth the expense next time :) I hosted a little pre-dance reception at our house including cold sandwiches, fresh fruit, raspberry cream puffs, a fruity-sherbet punch, and the first garden peas of the year.

We arrived at the dance just in time for the grand march at the beginning. Unfortunately, there were many more couples than singles and that left very few people for me to ask to dance. Oh well. As the evening progressed, though, more singletons arrived and couples started splitting up more. I got to dance as much as I wanted.

We met up with a few couples from our ward and it was fun to dance with them, too. Every dance I go to, I get more comfortable. The moves are less and less foreign with practice, though I still must be taught everything every time. The hardest thing for me to learn has been eye contact. Stranger or friend, you are expected to sustain eye contact with your dance partner the whole time. Well, not the WHOLE time. Whoever you are currently moving with, whether it's your proper partner or just someone else in your set, eye contact with a smile is the norm. I struggled and struggled with it myself, constantly feeling awkward with all this ocular intimacy, until suddenly I was dancing with someone who wouldn't make eye contact with me at all. Now THAT was awkward! I decided then that I would forget my own "personal space" issues with eye contact and just let it go. Just keep looking and smiling and everyone will keep looking and smiling at you. And you know what? It makes the dancing all the more fun for me.

Each dance is "called" by an expert at the front of the room. The caller walks the couples through the moves in the beginning, then keeps calling out little reminders throughout the dance itself. One of the callers at this dance would instruct us very poorly! When we would shout out for another practice round or a better description of the intended move, this caller would just pick one set of couples to demonstrate the dance for us. It's REALLY, REALLY hard to learn these dances by WATCHING! After a couple frustrating experiences with this caller, I decided to sit out her dances :)

My favorite dance was when Julia was my partner. It was one of the last dances of the night, I think, maybe my last dance. I can't remember now. I do remember laughing most of the way through it, though, and just being carefree. I kept trying to get her to dance with a tall, dark, and handsome youth with smoldering eyes but she just rolled her own eyes at me. We came home after the dance and stayed up late watching the new "Persuasion" in 10-minute chunks on YouTube. Yeah, there are some things I can only do with some friends :)

It was a wonderful evening! A great weekend with Julia. She informed me of an English Country Dancing conference/weekend in my city that happens every spring. We just missed it this year, but have preliminary plans to attend it together next year. Perhaps Mr Tall, Dark and Handsome with Smoldering Eyes will be there too, eh Julia?

Here is a photo of our group at the ball:

Here we pose in our gowns before the ball. My longer, straighter sleeves just didn\'t look good with the gloves, so I ditched them for most of the night.

Cheesy pose.

Our dancing group! Krogels, Stewarts, me, Julia, and Chris