Audience of One

A thinking man's disco

Last Friday I went to a barn dance organised (supposedly) by me and some other people. In reality I hadn’t helped organise it; I was just part of the group of people who were asked to help.

Xanna, a good friend of mine from church, enlisted most of the SAYGO leadership training team to help out at this barn dance – a fundraising event for World Vision. The evening was a success enjoyment-wise, but I think (as is often the problem with these events) we didn’t raise quite as much money as was hoped.

I’d gone down to church in the afternoon to help clear the chairs from the dance floor (read “main church area”), and of course get in some Playstation as well (since the PS2 arrived in the youth office I’ve been staring at a TV screen too often). Once the chairs were cleared the only real thing left to be done involved the food – something adequately handled by others, leaving me and Chris to our own game-related devices. As doormen, however, we soon had to set up our table and money box and prepare to let in guests.

I had a cunning plan for the evening, which ran as follows: as doormen were needed throughout the evening, and as Chris is an entertaining companion for such an enterprise, I could legitimately stay on the door for the whole evening and have a great time – thus avoiding all dancing and enjoy myself nonetheless. This cunning plan was foiled – but onto that later.

Chris and I were given some paper to write down a tally of numbers – in fact, far too much for such a simple task. As a consequence, we decided to play Squares – something which kept us and a number of younger non-dancers occupied for two hours or so. They tried to give us both advice (“Go there! You get three squares!”) which was countered effectively (“Shut up! It’s not my go!” or “Yes, but I can get five by going here…”) or not-so-effectively (“Ah yes, I didn’t see that. Thankyou…”) for the duration of the game.

It was around this point (after we’d both eaten and had started on a game of Squares: Evolution, involving any line length and any type or size of quadrilateral) that I realised my cunning plan was less cunning than I’d thought. The fact was, after sitting still next to the door for two hours, I was absolutely freezing. (It happens.)

I made a decision. I took a break and went inside briefly, giving my post to Jonny.

Now, I’m the type of person who loves being with people. As soon as I went inside I saw all the people who I’d let in, a lot of whom were good friends. I suddenly found myself unable to return to Chris and Jonny, people I see almost every day. Here were some of my favourite people in the world – I had to stay, and stay I did.

Of course, they were all involved with the dancing.

Now, I’ve never been a dancer. I once paid to go to a disco (aged thirteen) just because everyone else was, and sat at the side doing nothing for the entire evening. To me, dancing is just moving around randomly, almost in time with the music, making yourself look like a fool. Or rather, everyone else seems to be able to look good, but that ability seems to be absent from my part of the gene pool. Of course, dancing isn’t just to popular music – and this was the root of my misconception. Growing up believing dancing is either ballroom-style (only attemptable by those who have learnt how – not worth the effort) or disco-style (jerking around in a way as unnatural to my limbs as the the Night Fever dance would be to a chicken), actually taking part in barn dancing was something new. You didn’t have to be good to take part – in fact, it was assumed you’d never done it before. Quite helpful in my case, then.

Joining the dancing later meant that I didn’t get so much of a chance to get into it, but I loved what I did take part in. I was so inspired by my experience I went home and wrote a Wikipedia article on it.

Barn dances, far from being the domain of older people, are a fun social activity for people of all ages, including normally self-conscious teens. Maybe it was partly from it being in a Christian environment (though there were quite a few non-Christians present) that made it seem so forgiving of error, I don’t know. Maybe it’s just the way these things are. Whatever the case, it was fantastic and I’m looking forward to the next opportunity I have to take part in one. I’d say though that it’s a lot more fun if you know some of the people there. While I mainly danced with a girl I’d never met before called Hannah, it was because we were both part of a group of people we knew (she knew my other two partners that evening, Alice and Jo, from school).

Chris was probably a bit annoyed with me. Not only did I leave halfway through a game of squares, he thought he’d found a strict non-dancer in me. I hated to disappoint him, but I discovered that (for some types of it at least) dancing can be fun.

Matthew @ 19:59, March 9, 2005 to Diary | Comments (2)