A Viennese Ball

Sat, 21 Apr 2007 23:59:59 -800

The SDYAS Viennese Ball was held at the Balboa Park Club. Billed as the
largest ballroom in Southern California, the building itself was once the
New Mexico building of the 1915 Pan-Pacific fair. Now, it's a big room
with space for a lot of tables and a lot of dancing. The ball kicked off
at 19:30 with an impressively long and elaborate Grand March that went on
for a good fifteen minutes and outlasted several repetitions of the
Radetzky March. Following that were a series of waltzes and polkas. It
was fairly clear that the orchestra was bent on going fast, and I think I
managed to get into about a third of the dances. I tried out the Bohemian
National Polka for the first time since 2005 or thereabouts, and discovered
that I remembered enough of it not to be too much of an uncoordinated doof.
As for the polka, let's just say that it's ... fast. Having spent three
years learning Scottish Country Dance (and around seven unlearning most
ballroom), it was a tad weird getting used to three-beat measures instead of
SCD's two or four. Despite having rather a lot of dances on the program, they
got through them all so quickly that it was over just as I was starting to get
back into the flow of dancing! Oh well, there's always the one in Vancouver
next month. Christine and I finished the evening with a trip to Extraordinary
Desserts since it was darn close. Yay! :)