Country dancing ball

On Saturday, I attended my first country dancing ball which is a lot different to the ballroom dancing balls I am used to. The dancing hall itself was a ballroom hall (yay!) and had a great wooden floor which was really elastic. Country dancing happens in two long lines: Women start on one side, men on the other - that's called "proper", anything else is "improper" ;)) and you have a partner who's standing directly in front of you and a neighbor, so in total you're four and the figures are usually for four people and involve a lot of symmetry (that's good for physicists!).

Ballroom hall with stage and live band for the ball.

Most of the music comes from the 16th or 17th century and the dances are written exactly for a particular piece of music (so if you dance "Trip to Amsterdam", then this is the name of the dance which is directly connected to a song with this title). Since the figures you dance are periodic, but consist of up to ten smaller figures, there's a caller who calls what you're going to do next. But after about three repetitions everybody could memorize the steps at the ball and the caller stopped shouting, so we could listen to the music.