All the Way Around

“I can get you from here to Glen Echo Park,” my friend told me. “They have a carousel there I grew up on… literally.” Her excellent directions aside, I still managed to make a wrong turn in the busiest roundabout I’ve ever seen. The series of U turns I took to get back on track nearly brought me to the gates of the White House.

I arrived at the dance at 8:30, embarrassed that I was so late. But as I walked inside the Glen Echo Spanish Ballroom, I found that the dance was just beginning. Lisa had gotten there an hour earlier after visiting a friend in Boyds, MD, and told me that the band and caller had spent the whole time conducting a crowded beginners’ workshop. I was grateful, for my own sake, that Glen Echo does such a thorough job instructing its new dancers.

Most of these beginners sported useful “New Dancer” buttons distributed at the workshop. I could tell right away who might need help as I progressed up and down the sets. Four lines danced in front of the raised stage filled with people of all ages. The caller warned us to keep our sets to the sides of the hall, as the center was in need of repair from excessive use.

After a few dances, a woman grabbed me and asked me to dance. At the bottom of one of the huge sets forming, I asked her about Glen Echo. “This is your first time here?” she asked me. “You’re doing very well.” I explained that I was visiting from the Northeast, and she immediately apologized for the music and attendance of the dance. I looked around the hall; there were well over a hundred people there. Great tunes were coming from “Off’n Ensemble”, a five piece band including the usual plus accordion, hammered dulcimer, and stand-up bass. “We’re kind of snobs here,” the woman explained.

The style of the dancing was subtly different from what I was used to. People were much more likely to reach for my hand with a right-and-left through, and ladies held their right hands above their shoulders rather than behind their backs during promenades. Balances were very fancy, and there was something about them that I couldn’t place. Lisa and I decided that much of the dance had a distinct flavor of something outside of contra.

Rather than play a hambo or a schottische after the break, the band rearranged themselves to include a saxophone and blasted a swing tune. The floor was suddenly covered with a surprising number of people dancing swing, and dancing it well. “This must be the mystery flavor,” I said to Lisa. Watching their moves, we agreed that Glen Echo dancers incorporate swing rhythm into their balances and hays-for-four.

Later, a woman I recognized from Northeast dance festivals approached me. I met many like her there–dancers who traveled great distances to visit the contra dances they liked. She told me about the Glen Echo post-contra party, usually held behind the hall. They gather, pass around beers, and play music late into the night. Exhausted from traveling and dancing, a part of me was relieved that the party was uncharacteristically canceled that night.

I sat the last dance out and watched from one of the side corridors surrounding the floor. A woman sat down next to me and said, “You don’t dance like you’re from around here.” I explained the trip to her, and she responded immediately, clearly a seasoned dance traveler. “New England style is high energy and rigorous. California is all about attitude; don’t ask me why. What you’re watching here is neutral DC-area style. You can take this dancing anywhere.”

When it was over, I felt a great distance from my New England home, but DC is a city built to prevent homesickness. We drove back from the dance on Massachusetts Avenue, and spent the night in an apartment on New Hampshire.

-Washington, DC

This entry was posted on Saturday, February 24th, 2007 at 1:47 pm and is filed under 04 Maryland/DC. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.