pennsicdance: If I may play a bit of Devil's Advocate (Floor and Tent)

[White, John]

> From: Maugorn at aol.com
> 
> My only personal problem with the tent (aside from the
> concern that's below) is that climactically it can be a
> tad manic, after dark especially.  Thus it's extra challenging
> to keep strings and certain reeds in tune and 
> behaving properly.   

I would hope that someone takes this comment seriously and works
to do something about it.  As a dancer, such considerations wouldn't
be the first thing I'd think about when organizing the dance tent
and floor but obviously, we need to accomodate our musicians in
every way possible.


> 
>    Ok, that's all small potatoes, but there is one big
> long term concern I have with the dance tent and floor.
> It may only be 200 yards straight line distance from the
> barn to the tent, but it is a world away in terms of how
> the barn functions on the site.   The barn, no matter
> how you slice it, is the social nexus of Cooper's Lake
> Campground, and Pennsic.  I've always felt and still
> feel that social dance at Pennsic is most appropriate
> at that nexus.  The ideal solution in my mind is to
> get that wondrous floor set up in the barn, and get
> the majority of the kingdom courts moved elsewhere,
> perhaps to their own specialised venue.

I feel that this is looking at things from the wrong end
of the telescope.

If the barn is currently the social nexus of Pennsic (and
I would argue against it but only from personal experience,
in that in the past two years I was at Pennsic I never spent
any appreciable time in the barn, and the year before that
it was only to do a dance class (this was before the dance
tent or floor existed)) then it is so only because it has
developed so.  It is a large, somewhat centrally-located
permanent structure and as such, it can be counted on to be
where it is, relatively unchanged, from war to war.  There
was a time not ALL that long ago, when there wasn't any
other structure at Pennsic that also fit that description.
Once there was no food court.  Of course, once no one camped
on the other side of the road that runs from the Cooper's 
store to the entrance either (though that was before my
personal experience).

As Pennsic itself grows, it should be clear that things need
to change.  The barn is no longer the physical "center" of
the campground.  People camped down in the woods by the 
highway have to go farther to get to the barn than to the
new tent, plus exactly everyone who is camped between the
original solar showers and the parking lot (and that's a
LOT of Pennsic).  As others have said, the barn gets taken up
by other things night AND day, while the dance tent belongs
to dancing (though not in any way to dancers!).

What would be more constructive would be to get people to see
the dance tent as a place to dance, just like the barn was
a place to dance.  Not a place where the elite hang out, not
a place you have to be invited into to dance, not something
special and different and separate, but the place to learn to
dance in the daytime and a place to dance in the evening.
Perhaps having specialist dance events in the evening goes
a little way to impeding that perception, but perhaps it
doesn't (since courts in the barn have already impeded dancing
there until a certain hour anyway).  I firmly believe that the
dance tent can be just as welcoming and open a place as the barn,
just as much a place to introduce new people to it and to keep
others excited about it.  It may take work, but we will be
fighting these ingrained perceptions like 'the barn is open,
the tent isn't' and we need to fight that fight.  

And that's an easier fight to win than getting people to move
court, for sure!
> 
> Maugorn
> 

               \\Dafydd

Run, rabbit run.
Dig that hole, forget the sun,
And when at last the work is done
Don't sit down it's time to dig another one.

- Breathe, Pink Floyd