My primary thought after pondering this post for a day is that it comes from a place of immense dance privilege. That it was written from the perspective of someone who has, at least occasionally, the opportunity to dance a wide range of different levels of contra, styles of contra, etc. I will always remember the night in the Boston area c. 2010 when the caller (in my head it was Lisa Greenleaf) changed the dance mid-dance and called contra corners into a diagonal hay and the whole hall just did it without missing a beat. It felt so engaging, so sneaky, so good! Where I dance now, the only event in a year where we could possibly get away with contra corners into a diagonal hay (and only with a walk through) would be a challenging session at the annual dance weekend. Because as you say, it either takes too much time teaching to do in another context, or too high a baseline dance level. But those extra teaching minutes are worth it to get some of that shake-up, explore-the-form, push-the-limits feeling once a year.
The same situation applies to people who are constrained by something other than a smaller/more typical-level dance scene, for example people who are only comfortable dancing at queer-normative events or who get around only by public transit. It’s really nice if there’s a wide variety of options available at a dance weekend (and yes, ideally multiple tracks to facilitate this) so that we can have a few moments of that feeling.
ETA: I think the only ‘challenging’ type session I’ve ever truly disliked was the one I once attended at Flurry, which is exactly where you call out it should be OK: but I think the room (which was not even in the venue) was just too weird for the caller to gauge skill level or for anyone to be able to move comfortably.
My primary thought after pondering this post for a day is that it comes from a place of immense dance privilege. That it was written from the perspective of someone who has, at least occasionally, the opportunity to dance a wide range of different levels of contra, styles of contra, etc. I will always remember the night in the Boston area c. 2010 when the caller (in my head it was Lisa Greenleaf) changed the dance mid-dance and called contra corners into a diagonal hay and the whole hall just did it without missing a beat. It felt so engaging, so sneaky, so good! Where I dance now, the only event in a year where we could possibly get away with contra corners into a diagonal hay (and only with a walk through) would be a challenging session at the annual dance weekend. Because as you say, it either takes too much time teaching to do in another context, or too high a baseline dance level. But those extra teaching minutes are worth it to get some of that shake-up, explore-the-form, push-the-limits feeling once a year.
The same situation applies to people who are constrained by something other than a smaller/more typical-level dance scene, for example people who are only comfortable dancing at queer-normative events or who get around only by public transit. It’s really nice if there’s a wide variety of options available at a dance weekend (and yes, ideally multiple tracks to facilitate this) so that we can have a few moments of that feeling.
ETA: I think the only ‘challenging’ type session I’ve ever truly disliked was the one I once attended at Flurry, which is exactly where you call out it should be OK: but I think the room (which was not even in the venue) was just too weird for the caller to gauge skill level or for anyone to be able to move comfortably.