[SCA-Dance] Not a Known World Dance Seminar?

[Jane & Mark Waks]

Mary Railing wrote:
> Given the difficulties encountered in getting this year's KWDS "approved" by
> the SCA, Inc., what would folks here think about the idea of simply deciding
> among ourselves to have a "Biennial Dance Symposium" or some such, without
> going for official "Known World" status? (Yes, there has been talk in Indiana
> of hosting such an event.)  The dance community in the SCA is cohesive enough
> that I think we could organize a dance symposium on that basis.  After all,
> the corporation doesn't actually provide any material support, just the
> benefit of name recognition.

Honestly, I've never thought it was a good idea to have the Corporate 
level involved in any way. The KWDS was always a project of the dance 
mailing lists -- the upper echelons got involved somehow, many years 
into it, and have never provided anything but hassle as far as I could 
tell. This isn't something that we asked for, AFAIK: they seem to have 
elbowed their way into a community project.

Frankly, I see no reason to even change the name: we had the name KWDS 
long, long before Corporate decided to assert that all the "Known World" 
activities (of which I *think* we were the first, although I'm not sure) 
needed high-level approval. We may wind up with no choice but to change 
it, but IMO we should push back on that if possible.

So I heartily approve of returning to the status quo ante of the first 
several KWDSes: we should just tell Corporate that we, the dance 
community, are taking the ball back and doing it ourselves. So long as 
the members of this list (which is, to a substantial degree, the heart 
of dance in the Society) agree to it, I see no reason why we can't.

(Yes, I feel quite strongly about this -- it's one of the most annoying 
cases of creeping bureaucracy I've encountered, and I've always felt 
that we should never have allowed Corporate to get involved with it in 
the first place. I intensely dislike bureaucracy that simply asserts 
itself over a going concern...)

				-- Justin