All the Way Around

In Bloomington, we stayed with an old friend of Dave’s dad. He entertained us with stories of their folk dancing days and printed us out a map of Bloomington, circling points of interest. We spent the entire day, before the contra dance, exploring the college town: the library, the university campus, and Lake Monroe, the largest lake in Indiana.

We had two very different dining experiences in Bloomington. We ate lunch at a place that the town is famous for: Nick’s English Hut. The food there was not only delicious but was also mostly local. The restaurant prided itself on its hormone and antibiotic free beef from a 100 year old farm nearby. The best part of the meal, for me, was the home-made bread and side salad, which was made with fresh field greens—not a hint of iceberg. For dinner, we went to an Indian Restaurant. Someone at a table nearby us exclaimed that our waiter reminded her of Spiderman’s alter-ego, Peter Parker, but Dave and I just found him annoying. The food wasn’t good either. “We should have gone back to Nick’s,” we agreed as we drove to the dance.

We walked into the dance hall and noticed a sign-up sheet at the entrance table inviting people to sign up to call a dance. We learned that on the first Wednesday of every month, there is an open band and open calling. Dave signed up as caller number four and we sat down at the side of the hall to watch the musicians set up their instruments. I overheard a woman who was to be the first caller speaking nervously with a fellow dancer, “you have to help me if I get something wrong up there, OK?”

After the volunteer musicians had set up, she stood on the stage and told everyone to line up for a dance. During the walk through, she quickly discovered a mistake on the card that she was calling from, and from then on she looked more confident and called the next two dances without a problem. At that point in the night, there were five musicians: two fiddlers, two banjo players, and one guitarist.

The second caller was dressed all in black and she danced on the stage as she called out the figures in a sensual voice. As I sat out and watched her call, I noticed the climbing wall above the stage. The dance was held in the gymnasium of the Bloomington Harmony School. Someone who sat out next to me explained that with the semester over, there weren’t as many dancers as usual. Missing was the large crowd of beginners that the dance commonly attracted from the university.

The third caller wore a head set microphone and joined in the dancing while he called. His first dance was called “Highway Hypnosis,” an appropriate dance for Dave and I to do together, and we found it far more enjoyable than sitting in the car hour after hour. He called a dance by Tom Hinds next, named “Carousel.” During the first swing, my partner surprised me by leading me in a polka. During the next swing I moved to go into a polka again but he reprimanded me jokingly, “un-unh! Its going to be a surprise every time!” And it was—he had many creative ways of swinging, but my favorite was the polka and he would announce he was about to do it by yelling out “polka!” as we danced towards each other before the swing.

Dave was up next and he called two dances: Scouthouse Reel and Trip to Lambertville. Between them, as the musicians rearranged themselves, he made an announcement about our trip, talking of where we had been and where we had left to go. I noticed after he made the announcement that I became a much more popular dance partner; everyone had their own stories to tell us of the faraway dances they had visited.

The fifth and last caller called from an armchair on the stage. By this time the band had grown to hold four fiddles, two guitars, two banjos, and a percussionist, who began by playing the spoons. He later switched to a triangle, wood blocks, and various other instruments. During the last waltz, he adorned himself with a bib-like washboard and strummed along as Dave and I performed our standard final waltz.

-Bloomington, IL

Lisa and I turned North and headed into Indiana, the Crossroads of America. We were surprised to find that the central part of the state danced almost exclusively on Tuesdays and Wednesdays rather than on the weekend. Excited to attended these weekday contras, Lisa and I made our way to Indianapolis.

The dance started at 8 and was to run only 2 hours, so we didn’t want to be late. As we approached the city, however, the clock read 7:55. “Are we going to make it?” Lisa asked. I wasn’t sure, and sped along the highway, looking for our exit.

Miraculously, the hall, a space called the Athenaeum, happened to be very close to the highway. We pulled into a parking space on the street just a block away at 7:59 and walked confidently back to the building.

However, the woman at the desk on the first floor had never heard of contra dance. “We don’t know about what’s going on in the rest of the building,” she said. “We just work for the YMCA.” The Athenaeum housed the YMCA, a cabaret theatre, and several other activities in addition to the dance. Wandering the halls among intricately carved wooden stairways and old photos on the walls, we eventually found a handwritten sign that said “contra dance” with an arrow down the hall. Back on track, we found the hall just as the caller was walking through the first dance.

The hall was very beautiful, with a shiny wooden floor, smooth white walls, and large windows with wooden frames overlooking the city streets below. Opposite the entrance was a curved space built into the far wall about 3 feet deep and 8 feet high. A detailed archway separated it from the rest of the room, and it was a perfect place to watch the dancers and take pictures. Several lights hung from the ceiling, simple but pretty, brightly illuminating the room.

Lisa and I found partners, and were immediately impressed by the age diversity in the room. There were only enough dancers for one set, but that set was made up of college students and middle aged people alike. My partner was college aged, and told me that many of the dancers there came from nearby Earlham College. “I usually dance the guys part,” she told me. “I haven’t done this much.” She explained that she had heard about contra dancing in school, and decided to go one week. Finding she liked it, coming to dance became a fairly regular thing for her. Lisa danced with an experienced dancer, who tried to do fancy moves with each neighbor in line.

The caller chose a varied program. Just about all of the dances I participated in, which included the Baby Rose, were fairly simple. However, a dance in which I sat out to observe, she called a dance with a hey followed immediately by another complicated move involving a grand right and left around the whole set. Some problems arose with this dance, and she had to stop it in the middle. I watched a couple out at the bottom frustrated that they couldn’t get back in the set, while others found themselves turned around at critical moments during the hey. The caller suggested that more dancers come early to the beginners’ session next week to better understand some of the figures, then started a new dance.

The band played from the floor, and included one man who walked around the room as he played his guitar. The music was solid, and they played good tunes. Late in the evening, I remember an exciting rendition of one of my favorites: The Growling Old Man and the Cackling Old Woman.

During the break, a young girl, probably college aged, went up to do the announcements. The caller introduced her as the treasurer of Indianapolis Traditional Music and Dance Group. Thinking of the struggling dance we attended a few days before in Kansas, I was impressed that someone so young was involved in dance organizing. I talked to her later, and she told me she was just glad to be a part of the dance.

-Bloomington, IN