It is almost like the end of the school year: you know that it needs to end and you are happy to see the students go on to other things, but there are a few students you wish you would stay.  There are some Dance Commune Members that I would welcome back with open arms, no questions asked.  Also, it gives you the time to rethink “next year”. I have promised myself and my husband that there will not be a “next year” for the dance commune;  but if there were, here is what I would change:

1. Definite Shared Responsibility. It works so well in the classroom, I don’t know why I didn’t implement it in my house. I took the trash out way too often for a person with 6 other adults living in the house.

2. Communication: There was a scandal involving rent money that would have been avoided handily if people had felt obliged to communicate up front about what they were planning to do.  I teach my students this, we have a daily Community Circle where items large and small are shared. I just assumed adults would share without a forced structure to do so.

3. Higher Rent.

Just in case you’re interested, that makes the total number of people in the house 6. Duc, myself, Donny, Kassi, Stryder and Bryan.

Then, Lee, who is on the dance team and in graduate school, lost the lease on her apartment.  Kassi was supposed to move home to St. Louis, so it looked like there would just be a shuffling of communers, but the reality turned out to be different.  Kassi stayed and Lee moved in.

That made 7 adults in one house with two bathrooms. It was like living in an episode of Friends.  Only without the Laughtrack. Stryder somehow, even though he added a person to the house, created space for communication.  It was odd, while he was there, we had some great philosophical conversations about dance romance. He was nice to have around.  When he left, for whatever reason, he took the group conversations with him.  We all still talked, but at a different level of intensity and within smaller groups.

Stryder went to Phoenix at the beginning of April and Kassi moved home shortly thereafter.  Then, in June, Mary moved in. Her lease was up before her ticket to Herrang Dance Camp was scheduled. 

Donny is still here, he is the constant, along with Duc and I. Its interesting having all different kinds of people here.  We are all friends and we all get along, but there hasn’t been any kind of ‘commune building’ like I imagine might have happened in the communes of the 60s. No group meetings, or forced togetherness at mealtimes.  We did eat together and even cook together sometimes, but not a schedule.

In a way, it reminds of a poorly run classroom.  There are rules (loosely defined and really unarticulated) and there are expectations (that are more understood than explained) and there are dependencies.  Often there are misunderstandings and I am certain that there are resentments that hide just beneath everyone’s surfaces. 

I wonder if things would be different if we had those meetings and forced togetherness…like one has in a well run classroom.

Anyway, Lee and Bryan have moved into a condo in Downtown Dallas and Mary just left for Herrang. Donny is talking about moving in with friends before the fall term starts.

I feel like an empty-nester having never had kids of my own. It’s odd. 

It was to be the Blues Dance Event to end all events.  We wanted to raise the bar.  We wanted real learning to go on. We did not want an Animal House style party weekend.  We out Duc in charge of organization, made Maureen the Major Domo and I wrote out what we wanted people to learn. Bryan was in charge of money.

Well, it came and went and was a great success.  We had about 120 people come and stay through the entire weekend and are now sifting through the survyes that we sent out afterwards.  People took classes for two days and danced through three nights.

Maureen as Major Domo was great.  She organized the instructors and thought of small details that no one else would have. It was great. Duc kept us all on track and I decided that I am not a detail oriented person.  

We are already beginning to plan for next year. Which should be even cooler.

We ordered pizza and watched TV and hung out.  While we were hanging out, so were the dogs. They had to play right on top of us. They were running around the living room, slobbery and loud.  So, we put them outside and they immediately laid down and relaxed. I let them back in thinking that they would relax inside. I think that they wanted an audience because they were right back to acting like fools. 

One of the roommates has little experience watching dogs at play and really thought that they were fighting. He was vigilantly watching for bloodshed, convinced that something soon would Go Horribly Wrong. It never did, but it reminded me of teaching.

Here’s why: a new teacher with new and different ideas is in the classroom.  She or He has a new style and it looks a little out of control.  The kids are loud, chaos tends to reign and there is paper everywhere.  There may even be rats. Before long, there are whispers up and down the hall and administrators get nervous the something will Go Horribly Wrong and the rating, the test scores and these Children’s Futures will be ruined. 

My roommate eventually calmed down and even believed that the dogs were having fun.  He learned something, the three dogs learned something and all was right in the world.

Of course, then the extra dog went home and the roommates started playing some dice game that required the RA (me) to go up and enforce quiet hours. (11:45 pm) Did I mention that these are all adults?

We try to share the laundry, the fridge and the living room.  I am learning a lot about myself and about these other wonderful people.  They all have such different backgrounds and we are all drawn together by our love of music and dancing.

We had a birthday last week and one more coming up soon.  Perhaps, we’ll have a house blues party! Who knows.