All the Way Around

Lisa Sieverts, a caller and dance organizer who lives in Nelson, NH, helped Lisa and I with this trip a great deal, so I thought it would be fitting to include the dance that she started while living in Idaho. The third Saturday Boise dance became our first stop on the eastward return leg of our journey.

One week in Nelson, Lisa Sieverts announced a dance festival in New Haven, CT. “Now it’s pretty far away,” she said, “but I’m announcing it anyway.”

“That’s not that far away,” returned Don Primrose, another Nelson caller.

“What are you talking about,” said Sieverts. “It’s two states away!”

At the time, two states did not seem that much. In New Hampshire, this means a three hour drive at most–usually much less. I realized on the drive from Seattle, through Oregon, and finally into western Idaho what she had meant. Driving two states away took over nine hours in addition to the hour we lost crossing into the Mountain time zone.

We stepped into the Broadway Dance Center amazed that we were on time. The woman at the door asked where we were from, and we told her New England, adding, “We’re friends with Lisa Sieverts.”

“Lisa Sieverts?!” the woman said excitedly. “She was just here a few weeks ago for a dance festival. She’s great! How wonderful.” Anyone who had been dancing there more than a couple years knew who she was, and talked of her like she was a beloved big sister.

The dance studio was a great space, though it was a little small. Mirrors covered a side wall, and helium filled balloons speckled the ceiling. When the ceiling fans were turned on a few dances in, balloons bounced off of them until they had all crowded safely to the edges of the room or behind the hanging florescent lights.

There were between 20 and 30 dancers, and several beginners. Throughout the night, we switched back and forth between one and two lines. The dancers were mostly older, but a few young people joined in.

Contraband played the music, a band Lisa Sieverts called with at the start of the Boise dance. They had an extra fiddler that night, the daughter of two Contraband members. The musicians were very talented, providing great music with a playful element to it. Late in the evening, they played a tune where the first half was very quiet and the second half was loud. Lisa and I were partners during this dance, and we tiptoed the figures of the first half while exaggerating the moves of the second.

The break was long and eventful. It began with announcements, and among the first of them was a welcome to Lisa and I. The woman we spoke with at the door held the microphone. “Lisa and Dave are joining us from the Northeast,” she said. The dancers let out an impressed “oooh.” “And they’re friends with Lisa Sieverts,” she continued. The “ooooh” was repeated, longer and louder this time. “And they’re on a trip around the country visiting contra dances,” she said, bringing about the longest and loudest “ooooh” yet from the dancers.

She told them all that we were looking for a place for the night, and the man who took the microphone next agreed to put us up. His announcement was about officer elections for BCDS, the Boise Contra Dance Society. The dancers voted by ballot over the break, and the results were announced at its end.

An assortment of cookies, brownies, and pizza were provided in the hall’s basement with juice and water. I spoke with the caller and several of the organizers of the dance about its history. “Lisa told us she was going to leave and we went into panic mode,” said the caller, who was also the vice president of BCDS. “I learned how to call as soon as I could.” Lisa Sieverts moved from Boise around the same time that I began to contra five years ago. Seeing how much she has added to the New Hampshire dance community, I could imagine the blow that her leaving must have caused.

However, the continued vitality of the Boise dance was proved to me as the evening came to a close. One of the final dances was Chorus Jig without any request from Lisa or I. Then, the last tune of the last dance was the Wizard’s walk, my favorite. I sat out that dance because I thought I was tired, but I excitedly jumped around and took pictures as the two fiddlers, father and daughter, played the familiar notes.

After the final waltz and clean up, a young girl collected all the balloons she could to take home. Lisa and I watched as she crammed them all into the back seat with her, slightly concerned that the car’s driver would not be able to see behind him.

-Dubois, WY

“They better have chocolate at this dance,” I whined to Dave, as we walked towards the Phinney Neighborhood Center for our second dance in Seattle—the Emerald City Contra. I guess I was having a bad day, the kind that always makes me crave chocolate.

We stepped inside to the bright yellow dance hall and there it was. On the table by the door sat three bags of chocolate: milk, 45% cacao, and 70% cacao. I scanned the events of the day for good deeds. Had I prevented the disappearance of an endangered species or sequestered a significant amount of carbon dioxide? When nothing surfaced, I grabbed a piece of the 70% anyway before someone with better karma got to it first, happily handing over my seven dollars to enter the dance.

Savoring the sweet bitterness, I watched a man winding strings of lights around columns that separated the dance floor from the sitting area. The space was much smaller than the other Seattle contra dance hall, but it had a cozier feel to it. As dancers slowly trickled in, folks chatted while exchanging their street sneaks for soft soled dancing shoes. One dancer told me that she found the Emerald City dance friendlier than the Lake City one. Her theory was that the chairs at the Phinney Neighborhood Center were arranged in “conversational groupings” whereas the chairs in the other hall were set up in lines. She and her friend had tried rearranging them in Lake City once, but fifteen minutes later, she saw that they had been put back into their strict lines.

The caller, Mike Richardson, joined the band on the stage and asked the crowd, “Anyone here to dance?” As people milled about looking for a partner he exclaimed, “What a coincidence! Now, assume the position!” Everyone lined up for an easy dance that was great for beginners, who at this time made up the majority of the dancers.

The second dance was a circle mixer which the caller announced as “a buffet style dance where you get a tasty morsel of each dancer.” “Speaking of tasty morsel…” Dave said, grabbing us each another piece of chocolate, milk for him, dark for me, before we joined the circle together. When the tune started, the circle consisted of a mostly older crowd, but as we continued, more and more dancers wandered into the hall and joined us. By the end of the dance, our circle filled the floor. The majority of dancers were under the age of 40 and many were in their 20s, an uncharacteristically young crowd for the west coast.

I was amazed to find that the band that night, Out of the Woods, was made up of only three musicians: a pianist, a fiddler, and a guitarist who also played mandolin. The energy of the incredible ragtime dance tune that began the next contra made it seem like it was being played by a full orchestra. Most of the other dancers appeared similarly moved by the music and the hall was filled with exuberant balances and excited vocalizations.

After I thanked my partner for a great dance, I noticed our host for the night sitting on the stage, chatting with the band. I walked over to join her and she asked me how I liked the floor. When I smiled in approval, she told me that it was a new floor made of bamboo, recently built for the contra dance.

I grabbed a partner for the next dance and we took turns impressing each other with different ways to swing and spin during another lively tune. The dance had a lot of passing through and petronella twirls and our line was full of energetic dancers, including the caller from the previous night’s Lake City dance. Dave, who was also dancing in this line, was partnered with a woman who worked as a meditation specialist. She was interested in “why contra dancing worked,” and had been coming for a few months after being introduced to it by a co-worker. She said that the intimacy of eye contact and the connection of the swing made it feel like she and the person she swung with were all that existed. Dave responded that he had heard contra dance described as a sort of meditation for exactly that reason.

After Dave and I did the last waltz together, we walked over to the table for one last piece of chocolate. “So,” Dave said to a man sitting there, making sure he knew which chocolate was in which bag, “that’s the middle, that’s the milk, and that’s…” “the medicine,” answered the man, referring to the dark chocolate. Well, I know I felt better—but I think the dancing had something to do with that too.

-Seattle, WA

When we arrived in Seattle, we met Dave’s cousin who gave us a full tour of the city: The University of Seattle, Seattle Center, downtown, the Ballard Locks, the fish ladder, and several waterfront parks. Our sightseeing venture ended on a hill overlooking Seattle’s skyline. There, we met someone who told us one place we couldn’t miss in Seattle: the downtown library.

We took a bus straight to the Seattle Public library the next morning and once we stepped inside the LEED certified glass and steel structure, we didn’t want to leave. Inside this uniquely shaped building were 11 floors of books and comfy places to sit and read. We climbed to the 10^th, where we sat with a view of the city outside a glass ceiling surrounding us.

Later in the day, we wandered through a downtown park, stepped into the Seattle Convention Center, and came across a theatre. We read the poster for the play that night, and decided to get tickets. We entered to find a theatre-in-the-round set up and felt a little under dressed, but enjoyed “The Clean House”—a play about four women’s struggles, their theories on house cleaning, and the search for the perfect joke.

When the play ended, we waited for the bus back to our neighborhood. It was cold and raining, weather neither of us were prepared for, and the bus was late. When it finally arrived, we were disappointed to see that the double sized accordion bus was absolutely filled with passengers, some even standing next to the bus driver. Only two of them got off, and four people were in line to get on. We stepped onto the bus stairs and the bus driver said, “you’re going to have to squeeze in somehow or get off, I can’t have people standing in this area.” We couldn’t move in further, but didn’t make any moves to step off the bus, so she shut the door and drove on anyway. Inside was a great jigsaw puzzle of people—arms wrapped around bodies, legs contorted in order to fit, a man with a rabbit on his shoulder, and many hands reaching to try to pet it. I stood next to the driver and heard her mutter, “Looks like I picked the wrong night to drive a bus.”

The next night, we headed over to the neighborhood of Lake City for their weekly Thursday contra dance. They had a good-sized hall. Chairs were set up in a little nook on one side and on the other was an empty space where waltzers sometimes wandered. I noticed a girl in one of the dance lines that resembled our host in Winston-Salem, NC. Dave and I did the first dance together in her line. She was playing the part of the gent and when it came time for her to allemande with Dave she held on to his left hand and shook the finger of her right hand at him, “Hey! I know you! You stayed at my house!” It was her; we were astonished. She had flown from NC to WA for business and was able to stay an extra night to attend the Lake City dance. “Imagine that,” she said as we all circled together, “you’re still on this trip!”

The hall, decorated with handmade quilts, held three lines of dancers throughout most of the night. When the caller announced a double progression dance, he told everyone to squeeze into two lines and I ended up in a line that spilled into the linoleum-floored room bordering the dance space. Because the dance progressed so quickly, we never spun on linoleum for more than a minute, but I noticed people’s expressions turn anxious as they looked to see the threshold approaching.

The caller that night, Adam Carlson, was excellent at calling difficult dances. One of the dances he called had an eight person hey that crossed multiple sets. The band that accompanied him was looking for a name—they announced that they were open to suggestions. They were a large group made up of flutes, fiddles, and a stand up base. A guitarist joined them at an hour’s notice to take the place of an injured member.

Towards the end of the dance the caller announced that the next contra would be “in honor of Dave and Lisa; a little taste of home.” Dave was in my line and we gave each other looks, wondering which dance he would call. As the walk through progressed, and Dave and his neighbors circled next to mine he leaned over and whispered, “Baby Rose!” We danced joyfully to The Baby Rose, one of the dances that Dave himself likes to call. After everyone knew us as the dance travelers, we were bombarded with questions from each of our neighbors: Where in the Northeast are you from? How long is your trip? How does Seattle compare to other dances? Where have you been? Where are you going next? Where was your favorite dance?

Another question that was always asked of us was, “Are you going to the Northwest Folklife Festival?” Everybody in the Northwest knew about this four day long folk festival in Seattle, and eagerly awaited its arrival every year. The event is free and features concerts, jam sessions, art displays, demonstrations, and dancing from many countries. I talked to one woman who was planning on calling a contra dance at the festival to a marimba band. She believed that it would be a first and she was very excited about it. I was too, and ran over to tell Dave—both of us had been talking recently about how great a marimba band would be to contra dance to.

During one dance, I sat out and ended up chatting with our host for the following night. She was a fiddler in a local band and had many stories to tell about the Seattle dancing community. She told me that attendance at the Lake City dance had recently been waning, but was rejuvenated by last month’s annual Folklife Festival benefit. The special event was one constant contra dance from 8 pm to 11pm. Bands and callers switched, while keeping the music and calling going, and people danced until they were too tired and could slip out at the end of a line. She also told me that she was good friends with David Kaynor, a fiddler and caller from Massachusetts, and that he often came to Seattle to call or play at their dances and festivals.

We found out later that night that our host from North Carolina didn’t have a ride back to her downtown Seattle hotel. Eager to repay her for letting us stay with her in Winston-Salem, we offered to drive her back, though neither of us knew how to get to the downtown area by car. The car ride was a great opportunity to see the city by night and chat with our fellow dancer. After only a couple of wrong turns, we found her hotel and said goodbye, wondering if we would find our way back to our place outside of town.

-Seattle, WA