All the Way Around

On the way to St. Louis, Lisa begged me to stop in Independence, MO, where she lived as a child. She spent most of the morning on the phone with her parents, trying to figure out the location of their old house. Her mom pointed us in the right direction, and we found the right street: Aberdeen. I drove slowly as Lisa tried to pick out which house was hers.

“It’s so different,” she said, at last locating her childhood home. “They cut down the trees in the yard, and there used to be a cliff out back with a swing. How can they take out a cliff? Is this even the right house?” But it was. She assured me that the location and shape of the house were unmistakable as was the bird bath she remembered out front. Seeing the changes that had been made to her street and house left Lisa sad and wistful. I bought her ice cream at a place down the street, and we moved on to St. Louis.

When we got into town, we met my friend Josh and his girlfriend Emily. I had not seen Josh since we graduated from college, where I introduced him to contra dancing. He agreed to go with us, and even bought us a Thai dinner beforehand. Explaining that he was about to start a public access TV show about events below the radar in St. Louis, he brought his camera and tripod to interview contra dancers.

The dance was held at a venue called the Monday Club. We learned as the dance was ending that the name came from a group formed decades ago by “rich ladies with maids” for social gatherings. The hall was completely wooden, and had the appearance of a playhouse. This was even more apparent after the dance was over, and chairs were arranged in rows on the dance floor facing the stage.

The dance was the first of its kind in St. Louis: a 5th Sunday experienced dance. The caller and musicians were from out of town. I recognized the fiddler, Lissa Schneckenburger, who has played quite a bit in New Hampshire. I talked to her at the break, and she told me she’d been on tour for several weeks now, playing across the Midwest and elsewhere. At the end of the night, she sang during the waltz.

The caller used dances with many different formations, not just improper or becket. One began with a hands six from the top and involved contra corners. This dance had to be stopped in the middle so the caller could explain the progression again. Another was one of Ted Senella’s triplets. “Whenever the caller announces one of Ted Senella’s triplets,” the caller said, “there is supposed to be a big applause.” Then she continued, “This is Ted Senella triplet number 24.” An eruption of applause followed, with screams and screeches to accompany it. “Now that’s something we can do!” came a voice from the floor.

Another interesting dance was a 4 facing 4 dance that turned into a square dance in the middle. It featured a grand square, a move I had not done in quite some time, and messed up more than once. “You’re always facing someone,” the caller said. “If they’re near you, walk away, if they’re close to you, walk toward them.” One of my corners marched through the figure, turning her body in an exaggerated jerk like a soldier, sometimes serious, sometimes laughing.

Around halfway through the night, the caller said, “Alright! Let’s do the Wizard’s Walk”. The dancers buzzed with excitement. I later learned that the Wizard’s walk is a dance that is done every week in St. Louis. Lisa and I were partners for this dance, and we noticed that everyone knew the weaving figure sharing the name with the dance. The musicians did not play the corresponding tune, however, and I mused that Lisa and I had experienced both halves of the Wizard’s walk experience–the tune in Boise, and the dance in St. Louis. The tunes the musicians played were still extremely energetic, and everyone finished the dance satisfied.

The last dance of the night had no walk through, but the calling was good and the moves were such that nobody was caught off guard. It was a great end to the experienced dance.

When it was over, Josh had us stay afterward so that he could interview some of the organizers. Lisa and I talked with some of the dancers, finding out information from those that stuck around. As Josh folded up his tripod and we headed out, he told us he would bring Emily to the dance, and try to come more often.

-St. Louis, MO

“Alright,” Dave said to me, as we packed up the car, ready to head from Boulder to Salina, Kansas, “Do you have the directions?” “Yep,” I replied, and looked down at the sheet of paper I held in my hand: Route 70 East for 425 miles. “It’s pretty simple,” I added.

As we had been warned, the drive through Kansas revealed not much more of the state than it’s commercial farm fields, with the high points being a solitary, wispy, cloud in the northern sky, and a sign for some sort of farm sideshow that read, “come see the five legged cow and the wild boar from Tunisia!”

One of the ways we found to amuse ourselves on this long, humid car ride was to argue about the way to pronounce Salina, our destination. The actual pronunciation surprised us both: Sa-line-a.

The Salina contra dance, held in a dance studio on the town’s main street, occurred on the fourth Saturday of every month. We had talked to the dance organizer on the phone the night before, and he informed us, “The Salina dance is very small, and its only been going on for a couple of years. We may even have to dance to recorded music.” Dave told him that we didn’t mind—it would be a new experience for us.

I was especially excited to visit Salina because it is home to The Land Institute, an organization concerned with topsoil loss caused by current farming practices, particularly in the Midwest. Their primary goal is to use traditional breeding methods to replace annual food crops with perennial versions similar to the area’s native prairie species. Perennial roots would stabilize the soil and the long lasting crops would eliminate the need for yearly tilling. The organizer of the contra dance, we found out, was actually working for The Land Institute, so I was hopeful that I could find out more about their work.

We arrived at the Dance Elite Studio just as the organizer rode up on his bicycle. We introduced ourselves, and he asked if we had found a place to stay for the night. When we told him that we hadn’t, he invited us to camp on his land. We gladly accepted, and walked inside the studio. We saw that, indeed, there would not be a live band that night—we would be dancing to recorded music.

The space had a mirror lining one wall and awards and pictures from different dancing competitions lining the other. About 15 people were present, enough to fill a contra line, and we got to dance with each of them during the first dance: The Cabot Schoolhouse Mixer, a common circle dance. This, and the contra following it were called by a woman who was calling her first two dances ever.

Most of the folks there were older than us with a few exceptions: one dancer was from a local college and two very young girls came with their parents. I danced with the youngest, who was about 6 years old, and complimented her on her pretty pink dress, which she proudly showed me matched her pretty pink shoes. When we got to the end of the set she looked up at me and said, “It’s fun when you spin me around, I get soooo dizzy!”

During the break the organizer approached us. “As you can see, this dance is not doing well, so any suggestions you guys might have would be greatly appreciated.” We talked together about how to keep a contra dance alive, and gave him our best ideas: getting live music, even if it’s just one fiddle, advertising, membership, and doing dances at local festivals. He worried that there were not enough local musicians and people weren’t eager enough to become involved with the dance, leaving him as the sole organizer. He wanted more young people to come and wondered how he could attract a critical mass to his dance. One of his methods of getting people involved was teaching them how to call. This also had the benefit of allowing him to dance more often, as he was the main caller. That night, he planned on calling all but the first two dances. Once Dave heard this, he offered to call one himself: The Scouthouse Reel.

That night, we drove back to the organizer’s cabin and pitched our tent, something we hadn’t done since the wind storm in Texas. In the morning, our host served us pancakes made with wheat grown at The Land Institute.

-Salina, KS

Wyoming, though covered with beautiful snow-capped mountains and herds of antelope, had no contra dances that we could find. The state found a way to keep us there nonetheless. As we drove through Togwatee Mountain Pass, sleet began to fall, followed by snow. By the time it was dark, driving became impossible, and we were forced to find a hotel for the night. The next day, though it began with sunny skies, churned out worse precipitation than the day before, and once again, we wound up spending the night in a Wyoming hotel. Only on the third day did we finally escape into Colorado, where we would dance that Friday.

Upon hearing about our arrival in Denver, a woman from the dance community took it upon herself to show us around the city. She took us to The Mercury Cafe, which she called the coolest place in the city. They provided organic food on the first floor and nightly dance lessons on the second. After dinner, she brought us to a weekly open jam session where she played banjo and introduced us to some of the other musicians. When we left the session to return to the Mercury Cafe for open tango dancing, she handed us an armful of fliers and newsletters advertising local dances.

Though we spent the week in Denver, we danced in Boulder at their twice monthly contra dance. This event was held in one of the most beautiful dance halls of the trip. Red lanterns and a giant chandelier hung from the ceiling. Couches, tables, and chairs bordered the dance space and paintings of dancing couples decorated the walls. We later learned that the building had once been a warehouse before a dancer bought and renovated it. Many folks in the dancing community helped him tear down the cubicles inside, install the dancing floor, and perfect the acoustics, to create The Avalon Ballroom.

A beginners’ session was going on as Dave and I entered the Avalon. “People will be looking into your eyes as you dance,” we heard the instructor say. “It’s very intimate, but there are no long term commitments! Armed with this knowledge, we flirt up and down the sets.” With this, he ended the session, gave up the microphone to the caller, and the dance began.

The band that night consisted of two musicians: Grammy award winning violinist, Eric Levine, and Seth Houston, a New England keyboardist we knew who recently moved to Colorado. We were excited to hear Seth’s creative keyboard style once again, and lined up for the first contra. The music started out slowly, with Seth playing solo, then gained speed and complexity as the fiddler joined him. This was a pattern that continued throughout the night.

I found a partner for the next contra and though it was only the second dance of the night, there were already four sets filling the hall. As my partner lead me to the shortest of them, I found out that he was visiting Boulder from L.A., where he had recently relocated, and that I had danced with him at the zesty contra in Pasadena.

In Dave’s set, a man who he remembered as a visitor to the Nelson, NH dance noticed Dave’s Nelson t-shirt, claiming that he almost wore his own that night. In mine, a girl I recognized from a festival in upstate New York eyed my skirt and told me she had gotten the same one there. “We could have each had a twin tonight,” Dave laughed as we sat out the next dance together.

The dances went on for much longer than we were used to, and we wound up sitting out more often for lack of stamina. We were grateful to see heaping piles of snacks in the kitchen at the break to replenish our energy.

After the break, the owner of the Avalon came up to the stage and gave a lecture about proper footwear. He told everyone to try to make a mark on the floor by jumping up and down or dragging their feet along it. “Now,” he said, “if you were able to make a mark, it would be great if you could come with different shoes next time.” “Also,” he continued, “I’ve found that certain shoes, like mine, have ‘eraser’ soles, where you can scuff out a mark that’s already on the floor. If you’ve got a pair of those, do your best to drag your feet all over this hall!” I later saw him scuffing the floor intently with his “magic soles.”

Dave and I decided to do another dance together later in the night and started a fifth line in the center of the floor. The caller hopped down from the stage and stood in front of us. “I’m going to dance this one too,” he announced, “and I’m going to join this set. Are you two experienced with proper dances?” he whispered to us, then looked down at Dave’s Nelson T-shirt and said, “Oh, of course you are!” He began to teach contra corners, using us as his demonstration neighbors, and Dave and I were sure that he was about to call Chorus Jig. Instead, the dance wound up being Rory O’Moore, a dance both Dave and I had heard of many times before from the balance figure with the same name, but had never danced.

Dave and I agreed that the caller that night, Ed Hall, was one of our favorites of the trip. During one dance, while we were sitting out on one of the couches, he walked off the stage to join us, periodically calling into the wireless mic he carried with him. We discussed the trip with him, and learned he used to live in New Hampshire and call around New England before moving to Colorado. We continued to talk, and finally, he turned to us and said, “Sorry, I should end this one,” then into the mic, “One more time! Circle to the left!”

We volunteered for cleanup after the dance was over, and wound up leaving the hall close to midnight. “Don’t forget to keep hydrated,” the volunteer coordinator told us, as we headed out. We later learned that at Boulder’s high altitude, this was a common farewell.

-Boulder, CO