All the Way Around

“The Wednesday night contra is a lot different from our weekend dances,” a caller I recognized from Sunday’s special Zilker Park dance told me. He continued, “It’s more laid back. Fewer people show up, but we always have a good time.” We chatted for a while until a children’s karate class in the dance space finished up, allowing him to prepare the hall for dancers. Karate, yoga, ballroom, and contra dancing were just some of the events hosted by the Hancock Recreation Center. Dave and I were watching a few children practicing kicks in front of a mirror after class when someone peered out from the hall and said, “You here for the contra dancing? Come on in, we’re about to start!”

A wall with four stone archways separated the hall from a room that had chairs to sit out in. As we walked through one of these arches, we noticed that there were no musicians in the hall. The caller, microphone in hand, told the dancers to line up. His finger hovered over the play button of what we surmised to be recorded contra tunes. “Uh-oh,” we both thought, but before he had a chance to press the button, two musicians walked in: a fiddler and a cellist. The caller quickly scanned the line of dancers and said, “Alright, looks like all of you are experienced dancers. We don’t need a walk through.” Then he turned to the band, signaling for them to begin. The fiddler nodded, but the cellist was setting up his instrument. Fiddle and feet were the only sounds accompanying the caller during the first few progressions of the dance. Then the cello came in, adding rhythm with his bow. Later in the night, I learned from a partner that this pickup band is known as The Local On-Call Orchestra. “We never know who is going to show up,” he told me. “One Wednesday night we got 25 musicians.”

The evening started with one line of about a dozen dancers, many of whom I recognized from the Sunday dance. At one point, I got in line with the caller I had talked to earlier. He told me that this was less than the crowd of 35 that they usually get. However, it seemed that every time I looked down the hall, the sets had gotten longer. Recently, he told me, large groups had been unexpectedly dropping by to dance. In the line we were in, I met a bunch of new dancers, one of which was a woman who had learned about contra dance in an elementary education class she was taking. She explained that she was considering including contra in her curriculum when she becomes a teacher.

Dave told me that when he explained to a neighbor that he was from New England, the neighbor jokingly replied, “Oh, so up there they must say you haven’t really done contra until you’ve danced it in Austin,” implying that he often heard it the other way around. The Austin dancers did a lot of traveling from what I could tell. Almost all of my partners, upon hearing about our trip, told me about the distances they had traveled to dance. They spoke fondly of dance weekends in many different states, which impressed me as Austin is surrounded on all sides by at least 5 hours worth of Texas.

Both dancers and musicians trickled in the entire night. By the end of the evening, there were about 50 dancers and the band had grown from the fiddler and cellist to a ten piece orchestra with guitar, base, six fiddles, a cello, and a mandolin. Many of them, both dancers and musicians, came just in time to catch the last bit of dancing.

A large group of young people walked in toward the end. None of them had ever contra danced before, so the caller instructed the experienced dancers to partner up with them. I danced with one of them who told me their story: they were part of an old-timey band on a bike trip to Austin from Colorado. They heard about contra from a friend who went to Warren Wilson College. The evening’s caller was wonderful with beginners, and though there was no workshop, he called dances in a way that was easy to follow. A few times through, I was amazed how well my partner was dancing.

That night, we followed our hostess to her apartment–we in our station wagon, she in her motorcycle, and had one of our many living room conversations about travel and dance.

-Austin, TX

Just before we left them in Arkansas, Donna and David told us about an annual Sunday afternoon dance in Austin’s Zilker Park. Their son was going to be there fiddling. Lisa and I couldn’t believe our luck that we’d be in Austin at exactly the right weekend.

In Dallas, it was incredibly warm, and we were shocked when our hostess stepped outside the morning we were to leave and said, “Brrr… It’s chilly today. Don’t worry, it’ll be warmer in Austin.” I dance in flip flops, wonderful dancing shoes that form fit to your feet and never overheat. With two days left before winter’s end, these became my all-purpose shoes.

The day we arrived was the last day of the Austin film and music festival, South-by-Southwest. The streets were packed with visitors from out of town, and our New Hampshire plate blended with the Oregons, the Michigans, and even one Connecticut. “You here for South-by-Southwest?” was a question Lisa and I fielded about 5 times each on the dance floor.

Lingering in Dallas longer than we had planned and getting lost on the way made us late to the four hour afternoon dance. When we got there, the caller had just finished a walkthrough and the band started up. The music was incredible! We approached the dance stage and began to pick out the band members. A woman was playing the electric bass; in the back, a guy was beating on a full drum set; another guy was jamming out on a guitar, accompanied by an electric keyboardist; this was a rock band. In the center of it all, the fiddler took lead. I found a partner and joined in.

The hall was an outdoor stage in the middle of Zilker Park, what I would call the Central Park of Austin. This is not to say that Austin is at all comparable to New York City. It’s actually closer to Batman’s Gotham City. A giant, futuristic, green and black building hovers dark and mysterious above the downtown, and the main bridge across Austin’s Town Lake is home to millions of bats. Recently, Austin named itself “The Bat City.”

The people on the floor were of mixed ages, and many modeled a brand of contra dance fashion I had never seen. Some wore cowboy hats, others had sunglasses, one woman even sported some dancing gloves. I was sweating in my t-shirt right from the start, even though a perfectly situated tree shaded the contra sets.

The dancers were mostly experienced, and Lisa and I both got to flaunt some moves we’d been keeping on the shelf for awhile. As I turned my partner under my arm, I got a look at my next neighbor and I couldn’t believe it: she danced with us in Asheville, NC, and we had seen her around Greenfield, MA. Seeing her was like a flashback to Warren Wilson; she was even wearing the same sparkling white skirt. We talked of traveling to different dances during the break, and danced one together afterwards.

The band switched after the break to an acoustic, old-timey band with a purely Texan look. Callers of mixed levels switched on and off throughout the event. At times, a caller would make a mistake, but the crowd was very flexible, and callers and dancers alike pulled off excellent recoveries. Dances included several I recognized, including a few by Peterborough, NH’s Steve Zakon-Anderson.

Lisa and I had arranged to meet some friends from the Northeast who were attending South-by-Southwest. They arrived in the middle of the second half, and Lisa pulled one of them onto the dance floor. I lined up next to them with a young woman, and when I asked her where she was from, she told me New Hampshire! She had moved to Austin a year earlier to teach. We had an entirely Northeastern contingent for a progression.

I wound up sitting out more than normal, as the heat was intense. Lisa commented that it was like being at a New England dance festival in the summer. Watching the dancers on stage from the sloping grass nearby gave me a feeling of unity with the nation’s contra dancers. We are everywhere, and send envoys to our distant neighbor communities. Lisa and I had danced all down the east coast and had made it almost halfway to the west. I looked forward to all we had yet to see and the people we had yet to meet on our trip all the way around.

The next night, Lisa and I learned the Texas two-step, and danced at the Continental Club in Southern Austin with our visiting friends. Local legend Dale Watson was playing with his Lone Stars. Throwing in contra moves where we saw fit, we two-stepped and polkaed as Dale said in a baritone croon, “A Monday night in Texas is like a Friday night in Nashville; it’s like a Saturday night in New York City.” Then he polished off two shots and a beer. I wanted to add, “almost like a Monday night in Nelson.”

-Austin, TX

“Tango Workshop on the 18th” read the neon letters on the marquee of the Plaza Arts Center, a movie theater turned dance hall. We had just arrived at the town square of Carrollton, a northwest suburb of Dallas, where a twice monthly contra dance is held. “Why does Tango get to be on the marquee?” Dave whined. As we walked closer, the word “Plaza” blinking in pink and green before us, we noticed a poster in front of the building: “Contra Dancing, Plaza Arts Center, Always Live Music!.”

“At least there’s a poster,” I reassured Dave.

The Plaza was unlike any contra dancing hall I had seen. The brand new floor stood below a dark wood stage. At the back of the hall was a two-tier balcony with wire framed, red-cushioned chairs and matching tables. People sat out dances in this cafe-like setting surrounded by full shelves of used books for sale. The sides of the floor held lit structures used for displaying art. We had arrived to this dance early and got a chance to peruse the galleries and library.

The dance started with a beginner’s workshop, taught by one of the callers for the night. She was from New England originally, and reportedly started the Dallas contra decades before when she moved to the area. She had everyone line up for a proper dance, men on one side, women on the other. As the lines waited for further instruction, a boisterous man strutted up the center of the lines and onto the stage. “Bass player coming through,” he proclaimed proudly.

“OK, OK, lets begin,” the instructor said, pretending to be annoyed with him. She showed a couple of simple moves and then introduced the swing, explaining, “You want to swing as fast as you can, ’cause we want this to be as fun as possible.” I was afraid for anybody that got near me and my partner; he took her advice, sending my braids whipping around our dance space. “If you get dizzy,” she added, “just pretend to look at your partner, and that will help. If you just look at their chin, they won’t notice you’re not really looking at them.” I winked at my partner’s beard.

At the end of the workshop, the caller lined up the dancers once more in proper formation. She instructed the leaders to hold their partners’ hands and face the stage. “This formation, men on one side, women on the other, is called proper because usually there would be royalty with the band on stage. All the dancers would bow to them before and after each dance.” As everyone mock bowed, the bass player crossed his arms and grunted approval. “I guess a Texan bass player is as close as we’re going to get here,” the caller continued.

There were more women than men that night, so I got many chances to practice leading. I danced with one woman who told me the history of the Plaza Arts Center. “It used to be a theater,” she said, “but then it got turned into an art gallery. The art gallery didn’t make enough money, and when the place closed down, that guy over there bought it.” She pointed to the line next to ours as I awkwardly tried to keep her outstretched arm from hitting anyone during our swing. “The one with the grey T-shirt,” she continued. “He does all kinds of dancing. He wanted to turn it into a dance space, but still wanted there to be art here—thats why those cases are there. I actually helped with the construction of this great floor. It used to be slanted, and he had us all in here with pickaxes ripping it up. It was fun.” She grinned.

Name tags had been provided at the door with the North Texas Traditional Dance Society logo on them: two dancing mice, the gent in a top hat and the lady in a bonnet. Before the next dance, my partner looked down at my name tag and said, “I never wear a name tag. It’s much nicer to ask someone what their name is.” I was about to agree, but then I realized how name tags had allowed Dave and I to easily find our hosts at dances. He told me his name as the caller ended our conversation by beginning the walk through. Right-hand star was the next move, and I realized that the wrist-grab stars were back! For the past few weeks, dancers had done either hands-across or hand-piles and Dave and I had only yesterday been discussing how we missed our native stars.

During the break, as the band tuned up for the second half, the caller came on to the stage and asked for volunteers for an upcoming dance weekend. It seemed to Dave and I that her words matched the music and she was free styling her pleas. “There’s no one signed up to bring bagels. We always have bagels. Well, I guess there won’t be any bagels this year,” she said sternly. It reminded me of the Nelson dance back home, and the threat of cancellation if no one volunteered to bring cookies the following week.

I sat out a dance later, taking pictures from the top balcony; it was St. Patrick’s day and the image below me was unusual. Almost every dancer sported a shade of green as if there was a dress code. Later, a neighbor of mine proudly told me about his costume. “I’m dressed as the Irish flag,” he said, attempting an Irish accent. He wore white pants, a green shirt, and an orange beret. The band that night, Squirrel Heads in Gravy, played almost entirely Irish tunes. When they announced that the next tune wouldn’t be Irish, the caller would try to connect the tune to Ireland in some way. Her favorite claim was that something in the name of the tune “came from county Claire,” including “squirrel heads in gravy,” an infamous Irish fare. This was the only dance I had been to that announced every tune the band would play during each dance. It was a nice way for the dancers to learn more about the music they move to.

The caller announced a circle mixer towards the end of the night. The moves were typical, but it had a new sound for us. When told to, “go into the center with a whoop and a holler,” the dancers let out a chorus of “yahooo!” “wahoo!” and “yeehaw!” The sounds of Texas, I thought.

-Carrollton, TX