Dance has so many feet
Mar. 26th, 2018 10:41 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
beccaelizabethAlso, much as I love scenes where people learn to dance instinctively well together because they're just that drift compatible, I have been going to dancing lessons for Many of years now and still get lost and formal dance does not work like that.
Like, you might grok each other enough to not stomp toes, that is possible, but it still wont leave you looking like a competent dancer in an unfamiliar idiom. Too many different ways to not know your lefts from your rights.
It's like that bit in Strictly Ballroom where he's doing like he's been taught as would get many points and then everyone laughs at him. They're dancing together perfectly competently... by the standards of his subculture, not the onlookers. You cant just look at each other and go and expect not to crunch into everyone else's expectations.
Unless magic, obviously.
It kind of works if one of you knows the relevant culture real well, but there's likely to be differences in what partners need to do, and it's just... dance is complicated.
You wouldn't put a scene in where people stare into each other's eyes and recite poetry in a language they've never spoken before. But dance is a language too.
Also also I may have fallen down a rabbit hole of formal robes and formal dances and pairings in fandoms I never actually read or watched the source text for. But somehow the one telling the other how to dress and move in their world keeps getting me.
... I just then kind of lose suspension of disbelief on the details if they're not explicitly magical.
Like, you might grok each other enough to not stomp toes, that is possible, but it still wont leave you looking like a competent dancer in an unfamiliar idiom. Too many different ways to not know your lefts from your rights.
It's like that bit in Strictly Ballroom where he's doing like he's been taught as would get many points and then everyone laughs at him. They're dancing together perfectly competently... by the standards of his subculture, not the onlookers. You cant just look at each other and go and expect not to crunch into everyone else's expectations.
Unless magic, obviously.
It kind of works if one of you knows the relevant culture real well, but there's likely to be differences in what partners need to do, and it's just... dance is complicated.
You wouldn't put a scene in where people stare into each other's eyes and recite poetry in a language they've never spoken before. But dance is a language too.
Also also I may have fallen down a rabbit hole of formal robes and formal dances and pairings in fandoms I never actually read or watched the source text for. But somehow the one telling the other how to dress and move in their world keeps getting me.
... I just then kind of lose suspension of disbelief on the details if they're not explicitly magical.