All the Way Around

“I got the job!” Lisa screamed as she hung up her cell phone and jumped into my arms. She’d applied to 14 jobs while on this trip, doing internet research and performing telephone interviews. The one she’d just been offered was her first choice and was located in Corvallis, Oregon, a short drive from Eugene, our next stop. Lisa looked forward to the Eugene dance, excited to meet the people in her future dance community.

We said our goodbyes to California through the redwoods, then drove through the forests and fields of southern Oregon. After this full day’s drive, we arrived in Eugene hungry. I took Lisa out for a celebratory dinner at any place she wanted. She decided on a Thai place and we stepped inside. As our food arrived, Lisa pointed to the table behind me. “Those are contra dancers,” she whispered. I don’t know how she figured this out, but sure enough, they were at the dance that evening. Even more surprising, they weren’t the only ones there we recognized.

We walked into the Cesar Chavez School Gymnasium and saw the members of Massachusetts band Airdance tuning up. At the side of the hall, I saw the caller for the night: Nils Fredland. The last time we’d danced to him was at the Dance Flurry in New York. He and the band were in Eugene for the Cascade Contras dance weekend. Because we wouldn’t be staying for Cascade, Nils invited us to a post-dance party that night.

The dance was well attended, and people filled the lines as some sat out on the bleachers at the side. The calling and music infused me with energy as I zipped up and down the line. Lisa and I were partners early on and we let loose with everything we had. As new neighbors approached, we tried our best not to overwhelm anyone with twirls and turns, but I’m sure we pushed a few of them farther than they wanted to go. My only excuse is a possible sugar rush brought on by the candies offered at the door.

An interesting dance early in the night was a 4 facing 4 dance involving a snake around figure. Couples standing side by side in lines of four had to snake around their previous neighbor line of 4 to arrive at new neighbors. Nils demonstrated the move with my line of 4. As he did so, he introduced me to the Eugene dancers as a traveling contra dancer from the Northeast. My 13-year-old partner looked impressed.

At the waltz before the break, Lisa asked me if I could see myself dancing with this community long term, moving out to Oregon with her. Part of the purpose of this trip was to find a nice place to live outside the Northeast, if such a place existed. As things stood, Lisa would be moving to Oregon at least for the summer to work the job she accepted. Maybe she could move back to New England after that, or maybe I could move with her, find a job in Oregon, and stay there for a while. This was simply not a decision I was ready to make. “I don’t know,” I whispered, pivoting us around to clear my head. The dance ended and we didn’t talk about it any more, but the question still hung in the air.

Halfway through the second set, I danced with a tall girl in her 20s fairly new to contra dancing. Nils called a dance with a diagonal chain, sometimes a difficult move, but the Eugene dancers seemed up to the challenge. Things started well, but after a while I started to see a confused look pervading the set. Just before a progression, our next neighbor couple dropped out. “Um, we have to get out of here,” I explained to my partner. With no neighbors, we were sure to cause problems during the diagonal chain. We fled just as the next time through began, and joined the bottom of the next line, where we finished the dance. When it was over, my partner excitedly told me that that was one of the most fun dances she had ever done.

Throughout the night, I noticed a woman in black dancing spins and turns everywhere she could. She was probably the wildest dancer on the floor, and I asked her to dance near the end of the night. Sometimes my energy wanes by that point, but not then. I twirled her and she twirled me, and she was great at the swing. She never clapped for petronella turns, instead striking a pose before the next circle balance. We locked foreheads while swinging, and kept eye contact during the half a hey, weaving by our neighbors.

I pointed her out to Lisa as we danced the final dance together, and explained how good she was. As she was about to become my neighbor, Lisa forced me to her right at the end of our swing, switching our roles. We passed through to the next and Lisa got to swing with her. “She’s ok,” she said nonchalantly at our next swing, “not as good as me.”

After the dance, we met our host at her place. She talked with us about the places we had been, but I was anxious to talk with Nils at the after party. “We have an invitation to a party,” our host told us, then offered to drive. Relieved that she had heard about the party, too, we agreed to carpool. As we pulled up to the house and walked inside, Nils and the band were nowhere to be seen. Instead, there was a table full of ice cream and sweets, and 7 or 8 dancers sitting around it. We were at the wrong party. Each of the guests tried to get us to gorge ourselves on cookies, cake, and pie, as if to tempt us away from the other party. I explained the mixup to our host, who laughed at the fact that we had misunderstood one another.

We dropped a tired Lisa off back at her place, and proceeded to the other party. I joked with our host that we were contra dance party hoppers.
We got to the other house and Nils got up to greet me. We talked over a beer about the news back home and the trip. “We’ve seen a lot on this trip, and had fun dancing in so many places,” I told him, “but I still miss home.”

“Home misses you too,” Nils said with a smile.

I took another sip and contemplated the decision before me. The Northwest or the Northeast? I put it off.

-Corvallis, OR

This entry was posted on Friday, April 13th, 2007 at 1:23 pm and is filed under 16 Oregon. 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.