New Avenue for EDM Contra Outreach?
_One of the neatest workshops I have ever been to was a workshop led by Scott Higgs at the 2011 Dandelion Romp contra dance weekend at my alma mater. During this workshop, he had people assemble for a regular duple improper contra dance, and then had each dancer take turns closing their eyes through iterations of the dance to simulate being a visually-impaired dancer. The charge then to the other three in the minor set was to find ways to help the person with their eyes shut and for the dancer with their eyes closed to gain some empathy about what is helpful to dancers and what isn't (e.g., a hand to guide is fine; a yank isn't helpful).
I was talking to Penelope Weinberger, organizer of the Contra Sonic series, this past weekend (and I interviewed her -- watch this blog!) and she mentioned that people who were hearing-impaired still went to clubs and could dance to the vibrations coming through the floor. While trying to translate calls into ASL might prove problematic with ambient half-light in a techno contra, it does raise an interesting point. Traditional contra music, by and large, isn't terribly bass-heavy; the traditional music certainly has some, and there are members of the contra community who are hearing-impaired (not all of whom are older -- one of my regular dance partners for a while was hearing-impaired and he is now in his early 30s), but I wonder if this might be an avenue to explore. Could this be an avenue for outreach into the hearing-impaired community? Could a similar workshop to Scott's be designed to simulate being hearing-impaired to create a similar sort of empathy and similarly strengthen the contra community as a whole?
Man, I love Scott. What a great way to get people thinking about what's actually useful (kinetically, emotionally, temporally) as opposed to what just seems helpful when you're offering it! I love it!
I've wondered sometimes about the role that hearing impairments will come to play in the contra world, especially as more young dancers who are used to loud music all the time (iPods being not the safest devices unless used carefully) age into hearing issues. Will the sound systems just get turned up louder and louder? Will we all adapt to some sort of visual signaling? Will people stick subwoofers on the dance floor and pipe metronomes to them?
I suspect I'm in the minority, but my few experiences with techno contra and the more clubby atmosphere have been painful--the music is too loud for my comfort, and I get nauseated pretty quickly. That, plus the flashing lights = migraine triggers, makes it a space I don't really want to occupy even though the music attracts me. It'll be interesting to see (and/or hear) how all of this shakes out when our group of dancers is hitting its 70s.
You're not the only one to mention the flashing lights = migraine factor -- while I don't know if it would totally fix what you're talking about, as an FYI I know of several alternative contra events that are explicitly strobe-free (or make other adjustments) in deference to such things (although the ones I'm explicitly thinking of are in Washington state and North Carolina and I don't think I've seen strobes at the Contra Sonic series in DC either -- but I don't suppose that helps you much in upstate New York :-) ).
Oh, no worries! I'm okay with it--because I don't think that all events have to be all things to all people, you know? I'm a person who orients toward the trad/blues/jazz end of things, and I'm fine with that. I want to find a way to enjoy techno contra, but if it turns out that it's not my thing, that's okay!
That said, if there were a non-flashylights techno contra near me, I would definitely go without hesitation!