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

So, I decided to use Mapquest’s “no tolls” option while getting directions to the Glenside dance. Downtown Trenton, NJ does indeed have no tolls, but this brought us little comfort driving lost through its streets. There was a dispute between driver and navigator about whether or not to turn around but we were both happy to pay the 75 cent toll at the first higway out of the city we found.

Parking behing a minivan with the license plate “dancer,” we could hear the band inside singing a familiar tune. We walked into the Glenside Memorial Hall as the first contra ended. Each dancer wore Mardi Gras beads which spun around their necks, ankles, and wrists during the final swing. Three chandeliers, dimmed during waltzes, hung above a perfect floor.

The Commotions, that evening’s band, featured an accordion player, a piano player, and a singing fiddler, who I once thought I caught whispering melodiously “just in case” at every allemande left. Their tunes, old timey meets 1920’s jazz, had a hint of carnival flavor. During one dance “The Entertainer” was played. There were several callers, chief among them Bob Isaacs, the renowned dance writer. With his laid back way of calling, I felt that, like an old friend, he had great faith that we could follow anything he called.

During my first dance of the night, I was suprised to find that folks in Glenside do right-and-left-throughs like Mainers, offering their hands as we crossed the set. With nearly every neighbor swing I was greeted with a curt nod and a simply stated, “welcome.”

Sometimes I choose to sit out during squares, but I’m very glad I didn’t that night. There was one with a complicated figure involving multiple stars and allemandes. Bob Isaacs described it by saying, “its kind of like contra corners for eight people if you know what I’m talkin’ about. You’ll see.”

After realizing that the calling was open mic, I mouthed to Dave from across the room that he should call a dance. He got booked for the fourth one after the break and decided to call “Scout House Reel.”

Dave and I danced the first contra after the break, a medley, and one of the callers called a circle left “Alllllll the way around!”. We grinned at each other, but then Dave scowled, realizing, “that’s how I was going to call it!” During our next swing, I begged him to call it Peter Amidon style. So Dave got up there on the tall stage with the big curtains, and asked the band for some reels. Once the walkthrough was complete and it was time to circle left he called out, “Go all the way around. All the way around. All the way around.” “Just for you,” he later said, grinning, as we did the last waltz.

-Pennsville, NJ

Taking county routes where we could, we drove through Northern Jersey and into Ocean County. Having spent much of my childhood there, I was ecstatic to see Jersey trees again. Dave was in awe of everything on the first real driving day of our journey. It was warm and the windows of the car were open for the first time this early spring. After reaching my Aunt & Uncle’s house in Jackson, we drove off to the Point Pleasant boardwalk, something Dave wanted to see after I told him “its the Jersey thing to do.”

We experienced all the joys of the Jersey shore: Dave dipped his feet into the ocean, we admired shells and sea glass, made out under the dock, and held hands along the wooden boardwalk. We even went into an arcade that boasted, “Open Year Round!”. Walking the Atlantic sand, we shared our excitement that in just over a month, we’d be standing at the shore of the Pacific, thousands of miles away.

That evening, we convinced my 14-year-old cousin Lee to come dancing. We drove west to Princeton University and were impressed by its architecture, what we could see of it in the dark anyway. Students rushed around campus and Dave muttered, “They’re smart enough to get into Princeton, but they don’t know how to cross the street…”

The Princeton dance is held in The Suzanne Patterson Center, which is a senior resource center when its not holding two lines of Jersey contra dancers. We only met one Princeton University student but we were told they come in waves.

During the break, the dance organizers announced a birthday. Now, the Greenfield, MA dancers do a unique and amazing birthday song, but I’d do my birthday in Princeton. Singing, they produced a cake lit with candles. However, the birthday girl hid behind a friend, too embarassed to blow them out.

The greatest suprise during the dance was when the caller, Mark Widmer, announced a proper dance. During the walkthrough, me and Dave caught eyes open-mouthed across the room, realizing we were about to dance a Princeton Chorus Jig. The two of us were the only dancers singing while Harbor Mystic played the corresponding tune. We couldn’t help it, so used to the chorus of “lalalalalalala lalalalalalala” in our home dance of Nelson, NH. Though the dancers were close-mouthed, the musicians let loose with skat style vocal accompaniment during the dance’s next tune–”The growling old man and the cackling old woman.”

The floor had a few blemishes but the snacks were free. All in all it was a great dance that made me proud to be a Jersey girl.

-Jackson, NJ