Saltare 2008

Saltare 2008 has come and gone, and it turned out to be a really fun event. I don’t know how many of the attendees knew how much confusion there was behind the scenes leading up to it, but everything came together at the end, and I don’t recall speaking to anyone who didn’t say they had a good time. (Double negatives balanced right? Looks that way. Whew!)

I taught two classes this year: “Contrapasso Variations” and “Wherligig in Depth”. If you’ve been following this blog for a while, you may remember my series of articles on the reconstruction of Contrapasso Nuovo, which was one of the variations that I taught. That class actually went pretty well, although a couple of details did trip me up a bit, this being only the second time I’ve tried to teach it.

“Wherligig in Depth” was an exercise in the non-intuitive nature of some dance figures. You can teach this dance any number of times to rooms full of smart people, and it still won’t “click” with some of them. The figure for the second chorus – commonly called an “S-hey” in the SCA – is usually the culprit, although it’s not unusual to end up with problems in the other parts of the dance, either. I think making a full-hour class out of this one dance is a good start; we still had sets working on parts of it well after class time ended and most people had gone to lunch. Drilling over-and-over is the only way to overcome the mental blocks some people have against this one.

I have to give great credit and thanks to Lady Andreva Rigaldi and Lord Lorenzo Petrucci, who both picked up a lot of the organization for this event. In addition to teaching and making out the class schedule, they came up with an interesting variation on a Caroso Ball format for the evening. This involved some dance-partner auctioning as a fundraiser for the hosting shire, and that little brain-child brought in close to $160. I brought a pretty good price, too, if I do say so myself.

"Hellos" to all of the gang who shared the cabin with me and to our various party and dinner guests over the weekend. The cabin was a really good idea, I think, as it allowed us to have all manner of period-ish dishes and be a little social hub when class was over and the ball not-yet-begun. Henry Horton State Park really has some nice facilities, although there are some event policies that can make them a bit hard to work with.

We do have a bid from the Incipient Shire of Stagsgate for Saltare 2009, who will also be hosting Kingdom A&S this year.

Bad me did not take pictures, but I noticed Sir Griffin lurking with a camera quite frequently, so I may be able to come up with some from him.