All the Way Around

Driving across Tennessee, we listened to Paul Simon’s “Graceland.” At last in Memphis, we joined the poor boys, pilgrims, and families at 3734 Elvis Presley Blvd. The Graceland gift shop was as far as we got, but we took some nice pictures of the Lisa Marie, the airplane Lisa was named after.

Minutes later, we crossed the Mississippi river, the threshold to The West. It flowed underneath us, big and beautifully brown, leaving a lasting impression as we drove over the flat Arkansas terrain to North Little Rock.

The avenues in the part of town the dance was held were lettered. “Look, D Ave,” Lisa said to me as we crossed the 4th one. I refused to call the street anything other than DAVE.

The dance was in a gym at the back of a Presbyterian church, and it started at 7:30 sharp. Bright fluorescents illuminated the hall as the sun set on our new energy efficient American evening.

We walked inside in the middle of a dance. I asked a woman by the door to be my partner and learned she would be our host for the night, Donna. In the 70s, she and her husband, David, started the dance along with a clogging class series. They were an interesting couple who had moved to Arkansas from Wisconsin, and the dance they had developed was unique.

With a final twirl, Donna and I finished our dance together, and I lined up with a new partner. When I looked up, I saw that Donna was now on stage playing guitar, and the caller was different. Throughout the night, 4 callers took the stage, and several guest musicians switched in and out of the house band.

My next partner was a bit younger than I was. I asked her where she was from, expecting the answer to be at least somewhere in the region. “Philly, actually,” she responded. She and a group of other young people came to the dance from the nearby “heifer project,” a farming program started in Arkansas to grow local foods and fight world hunger. Volunteers join the Heifer Project from all over the country, and many of them attend the Little Rock dances, she told me.

As I danced in my line, I noticed Lisa dancing in the other, leading a girl and wearing a neck tie. We saw a jar by the door when we walked in labeled “gender changers” filled with neckties and pink ribbons. Lisa used hers more than once, but I never got to try one. I didn’t notice any men with pink ribbons, but there were several women that used the ties.

After a few more dances, a woman called out, “we have a birthday in our midst.” Shortly thereafter, another woman arrived from the back room with a carrot cake. Next to me, a man yelled, “It’s my birthday too!” That was followed by two other identical shouts. No less than four people claimed to have been born on March 16th, which was impressive considering that there were only about 60 people in the room.

Later in the break, a guest Swedish style fiddler from Massachusetts was coaxed into playing some couples dances. She played a hambo which Lisa immediately grabbed me for. Not many of the Little Rock dancers knew the dance, but Lisa and I saw many people getting crash courses as we circled the room. Near the end of the evening, she played a schottische and a polka. The polka was danced differently than I’m used to seeing. The dancers only moved in one direction rather than turning back, and performed double steps around one another rather than the hop and twirl steps done in the northeast.

At the end of the night, our host David called an interesting circle dance. It began with couple facing couple around the circle. In a star, we balanced in and out twice, then turned the star three quarters and finished the musical phrase with a STOMP, STOMP. The music went great with this. The dance progressed with do-si-dos and promenades. However, after running through this several times, David jumped into the circle and led it around the room, snaking in and out of other dancers. We looped under arched arms (one of them Lisa’s) and around tight corners until everyone was in a circle again. The music continued at a fast tempo. “You,” David pointed to someone across the room. She began to clog into the center of the circle, did a few clogging moves, then backed out to the edge. “You,” the caller pointed to someone else. He clogged his way into the center. Everyone around the circle clapped as David pointed to various dancers around the room, inviting them to clog. His wife, Donna, made her way into the center once among the others. He ended the dance having everyone go into the center with a whoop and a holler.

After this was the final waltz. Lisa and I prepared to leave the dance when David and Donna asked us to join them and the rest of the group for pizza at a local restaurant down the street. As Lisa and I navigated the avenues to get there, I smiled with the realization that the pizza place was on DAVE.

Eating with the other dancers, Lisa and I learned that one of the purposes of the Little Rock dance was to serve as a training ground for local callers and musicians. That was why so many were present that night. Most weeks are run this way, we were assured. I was very impressed by the dancing community; they all seemed to know one another. Socializing with old neighbors and partners, and swapping stories about the dancing we had done, I became convinced that every dance needs a late night eatery nearby.

-Greenbrier, AR

Before heading West, we decided to take in one last North Carolina dance. We drove East from Tennessee, and found ourselves next to the white water rafting site for the ‘96 Olympics. Our destination was the John C. Campbell Folk School, and we didn’t want to be late; the dance would last for only one hour. We asked directions at a gas station to see if we had gotten turned around.

“Do you know how to get to the Folk School?” I asked the cashier as I paid for a rushed, improvised meal: two bags of Combos, a PayDay, and a Whatchamacallit. But I realized as soon as I said it that she might not even know what I was talking about.

The Folk School was more famous than I thought. Not only did she know exactly what the school was and how to get there, so did everyone else in earshot, and they all had their own version of the best way to get there.
We arrived in plenty of time and stepped inside to find the band tuning up. I had been told that sometimes the Tuesday night contra sessions at the Folk School are done to recorded music, and seeing the band was a welcome surprise.

The building was called the Keith House. Downstairs was a beautiful dance hall with a dark wooden floor, a fireplace, and a high stage with a piano. Upstairs were dorms for the school’s work-study students: people who work for the school for two weeks in exchange for tuition for a week-long class. Most of the students who attend classes at the folk school are retired, and the work-study program program has been instrumental in bringing younger people to the school.

The caller and organizer, Bob Dalsemer, came over to us and introduced himself. When we told him about our trip, he explained the purpose of these short, weekly dances. “We get new students here each week,” he said, “and most of the time, they only stay for a week. This contra dance is to give each of them a chance to see what contra dance is like.” He went on to explain that the dance is only an hour long so that the students aren’t overwhelmed and they can leave feeling that they succeeded in learning a new dance form.

When it came time to dance, the room was filled with well over 60 people. Bob started with a circle mixer that had all of the basic moves: alamandes, do-si-dos, swings, and promenades. Next, he called a circle contra, in which couple faced couple around a large ring. That dance featured more complicated moves, such as right and left throughs and balances. Then, we were ready for a real contra dance. This was a great way to introduce beginners to contra from what I could see. Most everyone understood the basic moves, and by the time we were dancing improper dances, each person in the room looked confident.

The attendees were not restricted to students. About half the people in the room were from the surrounding community. What Bob started as a weekly one-hour contra lesson had turned into an event everyone was interested in joining. These more experienced dancers provided skill and teaching that mixed with the beginners’ energy and excitement, making for a wonderfully dynamic dance.

I danced a contra with a young girl who had started coming to these weekly dances a few months before. She pointed down the line to a guy in a grey shirt. “That’s my father,” she said. “I brought him here for his first contra dance tonight.”

After we had gotten through some contra dances, Bob told everyone to form squares. He walked the first one through, then sat down and played the accordion as he called. The squares were not easy, but the dancers understood them, even the ones who had never been contra dancing before. My square was a great group, made up mostly of work study students and other people who worked for the school. Some I had seen in Asheville the week before. One guy added twirls to every right-and-left grand, and the woman on my left helped explain the moves Bob called. Most of them were from other states, but had begun dancing in North Carolina.

Rather than end with a waltz, the evening ended with the last contra. Bob Dalsemer explained that he wanted each part of the dance to be accessible to everyone. The dance left almost everyone wanting more, which was just the way it seemed Bob wanted it: a completely positive experience that would bring them back next week, or have them searching for a dance in their own communities.

The next day, Sue, who had told me about the dance in Asheville, took Lisa and I on a tour of the school. Both of us fell in love with the place as we looked in on classes and the students, many of whom had danced with us the previous night. My square dance corner showed us her latest chair caning project; a neighbor gent explained the finer points of wood vs oil fired pots as he showed us a drying clay birdhouse he sculpted. Other students carved wood, or stoked a red hot forge in the blacksmithing shop. Both of us picked up catalogs, and mused about working two weeks, then learning a folk art during a third week–it sounded like a great stay in North Carolina, as long as we got to dance each Tuesday.

-Brasstown, NC

At the start of the trip, I prepared a mix for each state we would visit. In New Jersey, we listened to Tom Waits’ “Jersey Girl”; as we approached the nation’s capital, the Magnetic Fields’ “Washington D.C.” was playing. It was “Tennessee Jed” that we listened to as we crossed the Tennessee state line. With the bright Tennessee sun shining and the cool Tennessee wind blowing through my open window, the music made the moment perfect. I truly felt: “Ain’t no place I’d rather be.”

We entered Knoxville well before the dance began, singing, “If you’ll be my Dixie chicken, I’ll be your Tennessee lamb, and we can walk together down in Dixie land.” Roaming the city looking for a place to eat, we found ourselves in the ritzy part of Knoxville with fancy restaurants offering valet parking and $12 salads. We finally stepped onto a pedestrians-only street and Dave excitedly cried, “This is it! This is what we want.” Unfortunately, we discovered that downtown Knoxville closed down early on Monday nights. The only place we found offering food was a pub, so we took a table on their patio in disbelief that we were eating dinner outdoors in Mid-March.

We got to The Laurel Theatre, the home of the weekly Monday night Knoxville dance, just as the first contra was starting. Dave pulled me by the hand, then stopped, “Which side is the top of the set?” he had to ask a woman sitting out. The small hall was shaped in such a way that made lines form parallel to its high stage. “Top is next to the Stained Glass,” she told us, and then asked, “Is this your first time dancing?”. We told her we had danced before, and she replied, “Alright, just watch out for one tricky move: men enter late into the right-hand-star.”

We waited at the end of the set and, after a measure of music, the bottom couple welcomed us with a swing. One of my neighbors asked me, later in the dance, “You from Asheville?”. When I shook my head he explained, “Whenever we get new people that are good dancers, we assume they’re from Asheville.” I looked around—the dancers I saw here were good too, each with a unique style. I don’t think I was courtesy turned the same way twice that night.

My next partner was very curious about the trip. “You know,” he said, “all my friends make fun of me for traveling so far to go to dances. I usually go to Nashville, Chattanooga, Asheville, or Birmingham on the weekends. They say, ‘what are you, a gypsy?’ ‘yep,’ I reply. ‘I just can’t get enough of this type of dancing!’”.

About halfway through the dance I realized there was a balcony above the dance floor and decided to sit out to take pictures from up there. As I looked down, a woman took the mic from the caller and said, “Y’all know Dave and Lisa? They’re with us from New England on their way across the country visiting dances.” She pointed to Dave on the floor, and I had to wave frantically from the balcony when she said, “Now where’s Lisa?”. It was great watching the dancers, band, and caller from up above.

The band, New Lost Weasel Concern, was pretty big, which might have been a function of Tennessee’s large population of musicians. Some of the instruments played that night were hammered dulcimer, guitar, banjo, stand up bass, flute, and fiddle. The local caller, Tim Klein, stomped his feet as he called out the figures. He liked to staccato his ladies chains: “ladies ch-ch-ch-ch-chain,” making them sound like the David Bowie song. He called a lot of fun dances with uncommon figures like “the chase” and handy-hand allemande—I was impressed with his selections.

Knoxville had a small, older crowd of dancers. Only a couple times during the night were two lines needed, but it wasn’t hard to get partners. Everyone wanted to get a dance in with the travelers from New England.

During the break we met and chatted with our hostess for the night and afterwards, Dave asked her to dance. He told me she had a very flowy, modern dance style to her contra dancing and that she did an impressive floor slap during one balance. We later learned that she had been interviewed and pictured for an article about dancing in “Health”, a national magazine.

http://www.health.com/health/package/0,23653,1224041,00.html

I was thrilled when a woman’s gypsy was called during the last dance; it’s one of my favorite contra figures. Usually, only a few girls will look deep into your eyes or put their forehead to yours during a gypsy, but many won’t feel comfortable enough to do that. In Knoxville, every single woman in the line did a true gypsy with me.

After the dance, our hostess took us to a bar in “the old city” with her friend and the dance scheduler. We chatted over beers about music and life on the road.

-Memphis, TN