All the Way Around

The flier was a work of art.

“S.F. Bay Queer Contra Presents, from the nation’s contra dance mecca, Greenfield, Massachusetts, the HIGH INTENSITY and JOYFUL music of The Moving Violations and the charismatic calling of Linda Leslie”

In the center of the purple sheet of paper was an excellent likeness of Linda Leslie waving among a garden of giant flowers as the sun set behind the Humanist Hall, the location of the monthly dance. The flier boasted, “If you only attend one contra this year, this is the one to come to.” I later saw on the dance’s website that the San Francisco Bay Times wrote that the queer contra was “The friendly barn dance that everyone’s talking about.”

We parked as close as we could and walked to the dance hall down a busy street in Oakland. From an open window, we could hear Linda Leslie’s voice calling a dance—a strange, yet comforting experience hearing her so far from home. On the table at the entrance of the hall, there were two baskets. One contained red arm bands; the other held pins that read, Ask me to dance!. “You’ll need one of these if you want to dance the part of the leader,” the woman sitting behind the table said to Dave, pointing to the red arm bands. Dave and I looked at each other and winked. I grabbed an arm band, Dave put on a pin, and we lined up to dance.

The gender free vocabulary took some getting used to. “Bands on one side; bares on the other. Take hands in circles of four starting at the top of the set, and the number 1s change places so that the bands are on the left and the bares are on the right. Bands allemande left in the center, then allemande right your neighbor, then bares in the center for a do-si-do.”

During the dance, I tried to impress Dave with some fancy leads, but every time he was swung by a male neighbor he would jokingly tell me, “yeah, well, you’re not as good as that guy.” Dave and I played the opposite dance roles for most of the night which was exciting for me. Usually, I lead once or twice in a night, and my partners and neighbors are always female. In Oakland, the gender of each neighbor was a surprise, and I led both guys and girls as partners. Dave was led by both genders, as well, but at the end of the night, he told me that while following was an interesting change, he preferred to lead.

That night, The Moving Violations, a band from Massachusetts that we were both well aquainted with, played.  After the first dance, Dave and I walked up to them and requested that they play “Rainy Night in Montague,” a great song from their second album, “Quick Spin.” They promised to play it some time during the night and we lined up with new partners for another dance.

The next one featured a hey-for-four and Linda Leslie walked to the center of the floor to explain the figure. “The hey is basically a fun way to groove to the music,” she explained, “and there are three rules: Number 1, always keep moving. Number 2, always smile. And number 3, always end back on the side with your partner. Now, this dance we’re about to do is very flirty, so get ready!” She walked up to the band and asked, “can you play something a little–” as she moved her shoulders and arms around in a sensual manner. The fiddler said, “Oh we have just the thing.” The first tune was perfect, with a sultry Middle Eastern sound that raised eyebrows and made shoulders shake through each hey. The next one sounded like a Bach bouree, tempting me to bounce up and down at each allemande. The final tune, a gypsy ballad, had a certain urgency to it and I swung with intention.

During the break, we stuffed our faces with characteristically good California treats: chocolates, pie, and whipped cream. I chatted with a woman as I snacked, and learned that Dave and I were two of four Iron Dancers in the hall. Even though they lived in the bay area, she and her friend had also completed the five consecutive nights of contra dancing which included the Brattleboro Dawn Dance in Vermont, and were planning on doing it again this year.

Later, as people began to line up for another dance, I heard Linda Leslie say, “I think the band is going to play something from one of the albums they have for sale up here.” Guessing that they were about to play Rainy Night in Montague, I quickly grabbed a partner and got in the same line as Dave. The band switched to the tune the moment he became my neighbor and we ecstatically swung.

-Sebastopol, CA

“Find partners and line up for a contra dance,” said a familiar voice in the Grace North Church, home to the Wednesday night dance in Berkeley, CA.  I looked up the hall toward the caller, and there stood Linda Leslie of Massachusetts.

This was the first time that we ran into a caller from the Northeast so far from home, and this wouldn’t be the last time we danced to Linda Leslie in California.  She and the Moving Violations, also of Massachusetts, were scheduled to play for a dance weekend, and they were squeezing in gigs around it.  At the end of the night, two flyers were shoved into Lisa’s and my hands.  One was for a Thursday night dance in Oakland to Linda Leslie and the Moving Violations, and the other was Sunday night in another part of the bay area with calling and music by, you guessed it, Linda Leslie and the Moving Violations.  With these two new dances we hadn’t heard of before, we were set up to dance five nights in a row starting that night.

The band in Berkeley was local, consisting of the trio, the Killarney Boys of Pleasure, along with a few additional musicians one of my partners described as “some of the best in the area.”  I was very impressed with the music they played.  Flute and fiddle switched off playing lead, and the rhythm was phenomenal, really giving us on the floor something to hook our feet to.

The dance was fairly small, consisting of about 40 or so dancers, but there was a high number of experienced folks as well as a diverse age range.

Linda Leslie wasn’t the only person I recognized that night.  My very first neighbor was a person I had seen in the Boston area, and a few neighbors later, I danced with a woman I had danced with many times in Greenfield.  The next dance, in a different line, I came across a woman I knew I had seen before, but I wasn’t sure where.  When she told me her name was Lynn, I realized that I was swinging with Lynn Ackerson, a caller I had danced to at many festivals in the Northeast.  I quickly secured the next dance with her.

Lynn followed every move I threw at her while having a conversation with me all the while.  She told me of all the places she traveled and I compared notes with her.  She told me of many dance weekends on the west coast that I had never heard of.

Later in the night, I danced with a college aged girl who was able to guess where I danced from my swing alone.  “You’re from the Northeast,” she said, as we finished the swing facing across the set.  “Don’t worry, it’s a compliment.”

“How are the swings different around here?” I asked her.

“In the Northeast, the swings are tighter, a bit faster, and have a great connection,” she explained.  Just before the break, the two of us waltzed together.  She was a skilled partner in both dances.  She had obviously been dancing for some time.  I asked her what her favorite dance in the area was, and she said Berkeley.

I approached Linda Leslie during the break, and she recognized me right away.  “I saw you dancing out there and got so excited.  ‘There’s Dave,’ I said to myself.  He’s always on time,” she said.  I had never thought of a caller watching for that, but as I thought about it later, it made sense that Linda Leslie would notice.  Over the next few dances, I saw that she would help the couples having trouble with the dance as it was going on, pointing them in the right direction if they got confused.

The hall was a great space, though it was a bit small.  A round maze design was painted on the floor, daring the dancers to reach its center.  Long red curtains hung from the windows on the side wall.  The band and caller were set up on a carpeted area next to the dance floor which contained comfortable chairs and couches where dancers sat out.  This hall, however, was getting to be a source of trouble.  Some worried organizers told me that the rent was going up and the dance might have to move.  I had noticed at the start that admission was fairly high.

Toward the end of the night, I danced with a young, blind woman who also happened to be one of the best dancers in the room.  She and her fiance were both avid contra dancers who had been to Falcon Ridge in New York the year before and would later attend several of the dances Lisa and I went to during our stay in the Bay Area.  She had great connection and an excellent sense of timing.  I asked her what the most difficult move was for her.  “The gypsy,” she said.  “I kind of just have to fake it.”

We drove to our host’s house in neighboring El Cerrito.  Getting lost along the way, we went up a steep hill and had to turn back.  When we did, we saw the most amazing view of San Francisco: lights everywhere, water, bridges, and the smaller hills surrounding us.  Finally arriving at our destination, our host pointed out the Golden Gate bridge from his patio.

-Sebastapol, CA

A chill went through me as the Santa Barbara contra dance came to an end. Dave and I 1-2-3-ed in the dark hall with the only light coming from an erratically spinning disco ball, and discussed in whispers what we had seen that night. So many of our hosts and partners during the trip had told us about the dance that it become almost mythical to us–maybe that contributed to what we felt, but we decided that there was some very mysterious quality to the Santa Barbara dance.

We drove up to Santa Barbara from Calabassas, a town north of Los Angeles, along the coastal highway. Waves splashing on one side of us, mountains rising on the other, it was a gorgeous drive. We had gotten a ride from a friend of Dave’s cousin’s, someone who had contra danced before. On the way, she talked about the history of the area: mudslides, onion farms, dog parades, and elephant seals.

Though we were very late, the parking spot directly in front of the dance hall remained empty. We pulled into the spot, and walked into the Carillo Ballroom, where the Sunday night dance was held. Both of our mouths dropped open and I started, “Last night looked like Greenfield…” and Dave finished “and tonight looks like Peterborough!” The Santa Barbara hall looked eerily like one of our frequent haunts back home. The color of the floor and the walls, the shape of the hall and the floorboards, the high stage, and the balcony all resembled Peterborough, NH’s.

As Dave asked me for the first dance, I realized that I had forgotten my dance shoes. At any other dance I would have been slightly annoyed and just danced barefoot. I had been looking forward to dancing on a sprung floor (something Santa Barbara was famous for) for so long, though, that I was more than a little disappointed at my bad luck there. Looking around I didn’t see anyone else dancing barefoot, which is unusual for a contra dance, so I decided that I had to dance in my clunky sandals. They were a size too big for me, leaving me feeling like a very ungraceful dancer. However, Dave’s excitement about the floor lifted my spirits, as he jumped up and down on a sprung floorboard, making me bounce, a couple of feet away from him.

What happened next made me forget all about dancing shoes. As Dave and I delighted in the fresh California oranges from the snack table, we were approached by a woman whose identity is still in question. Dave insisted that the she was a time traveler from the future, while I thought she had the ability to read minds. She told Dave that he was a great caller and musician and she walked up to me as I stood alone, inwardly doubting my memory, and told me to have faith in my ability to remember. After she wandered away, Dave joined me and we stared vacantly at the three lines of dancers. Suddenly, though the band continued to play, every dancer in the room stopped dancing at what seemed like the same exact moment. There was no explanation for this, and the musicians, just as confused as we were, stopped playing.

The stage’s backdrop was decorated with stars and a moon. It fit well with the mood of the dance and behind the local band, Kristina and Her Right-Hand Stars, who played jazzed up contra tunes that were a lot of fun to dance to. The caller, Kate Power, was from Ohio. She called dances that were enjoyed by experienced dancers but were easy enough for beginners to excel at.

One of the dances she called that night, called “Katie’s Trip to Starbase 12,” introduced me to a new contra figure: the Swinging Star. In this figure, a group of four does a left hand wrist-grab star, and everyone puts in their right hands for a hands across star, and with footwork similar to a basket swing, you “swing” the star to the right.

Later in the night, I decided to check out the balcony. As I climbed the narrow staircase on the side of the hall I realized that the balcony must be rarely used. I wiped cobwebs from off my face, and drew a spiral with my finger on one of the dusty benches. The balcony was steep, and as I walked towards the edge to watch the dancers, it almost felt like I was about to fly over the railing. I quickly snapped some pictures and walked back down to the dance hall.

We heard from dancers all over the country about the attitude of Santa Barbara dancers. Because of this, Dave and I hadn’t pushed his cousin to go dancing with us; we weren’t sure what the crowd would be like. But I couldn’t find any particular attitude in the dancers there I met. Every neighbor I passed was curious about my story and quick to welcome me to California and their dance hall. So, after the dance was over, we made sure to get a promise from the dancer who accompanied us that she would persuade Dave’s cousin to attend the next friendly, though maybe a little curious, Santa Barbara dance.

-Callabassas, CA