Tonight seemed hard, but in the end, it was all in my mind. The location was the community park on the corner of Richards and Davie. Now this park is long and narrow with water features at both the north and south ends. There is also a long, narrow trough connecting the two features. It appeared that we should pick one end or the other in order to maintain visible from the street. Initially I thought the north end was superior; due to the current civic strike, the water was not flowing and that left these amazing step-like stages to play with. However, by the time I rallied the troupes to have them move to the other end, the skateboarders had moved in to the space and I was intimidated into picking the other end. So our end was square shaped with a circular pool with a central raised platform where the water is usually pumped. That meant that we were not contained, and in fact, we were considerably separated, a figuration that I found discomforting, not to mention that we were surrounded by occupied benches, providing our first ready-made audience. In the one corner there were three young guys, they dressed hip and their body language was aloof even though they were obviously watching intently. I could see one of them had an ipod and I was irritated that they refused to dance. Then the most fun thing happened: someone I know joined us. He danced with vigor, and I was so happy. After the session, I asked him how he had heard about us. Apparently he was told by a mutual acquaintance and he came by to check us out because “he was on his way to get green onions anyways” And then Robyn told me that the “cool kids” would be joining us tomorrow, that they were really interested but that only one of them had an ipod on them. And it was all-fine.
Tonight I danced without a strategy. I needed time to reflect on the act itself.
This is us getting ready
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