I called last night at the BIDA dance
in Boston, my first time calling for this Sunday evening series about
which I’ve heard mny good things. It’s not that I’d been playing hard
to get, just that an invitation hadn’t come along before. I was
delighted to be invited, and even happier at the end of the evening.
BIDA is the acronym for Boston
Intergenerational Dance Advocates, an unwieldy name so you
readily understand why they go by their nickname. It’s a young
series, founded in 2008, and unlike some other new dance events, this
one had an intentional goal from the start. The organizers were
looking to fill a niche in the already very full Boston area dance
scene; they wanted to create “an organization which would
strengthen community ties and provide opportunities for dancers,
musicians, callers, and dance organizers to share knowledge and
energy between generations.” They’ve succeeded.
After the demise of the VFW Hall some
years ago, which was the location for the very popular Thurday night
dance, the regular weekly contra dances all were being held in the
Scout House, a venerable and lovely hall in Concord, MA.
Unfortunately, it’s not easy to get to Concord, especially if you’re
without a car. So BIDA set as one of its goals to create a regular
series that would be easy to reach by public transportation; the hall
they settled on, the Masonic Temple in Cambridge, is a few steps away
from the Porter Square stop on the Red Line.
In Concord in recent years, there’s
been a tendency for a group of mostly young dancers to form one
set– the “fireplace set,” so named because the line is
always on one side of the hall. Older dancers certainly could dance
there, but the hot young dancers would rarely dance elsewhere. The
fireplace set developed a reputation for energetic dancing, with lots
of flourishes and its own high-energy syncopated balance step. In
short, it was an in-crowd place to dance. BIDA wanted to create a
series that would encourage dancers of all ages to mix with each
other, where there wouldn’t be a separation among the generations.
Based on what I saw, in this, too, they’ve succeeded. The majority of
the dancers were certainly on the young side, but the older dancers
had no problems finding young partners and dancing anywhere in the
hall.
Full disclosure: the hall did have a
few “cool,
hip dancers,” folks who sleazed around on a partner swing,
finishing with an extended dip that invariably made them late for the
next figure. So I tried to avert my eyes and keep my attention
focused on the bigger picture. Overall, the energy in the hall was
positive, the dozen or so newcomers were never at a loss for more
experienced partners, folks danced eagerly and respectfully, and the
dancers were open to whatever the caller offered up.
I was working with a trio assembled at
the last minute. Julie Metcalf, a young fiddler whom I didn’t know,
was playing with Glen Loper (mandolin) and Larry Ungar (guitar and
banjo), two musicians who’ve been around for a while. In such a trio,
the fiddler is the key person in the band, so Julie and I exchanged a
series of e-mails during the week before the dance. I learned that
she is comfortable playing in many different styles but that her
go-to style is old-time southern Appalachian tunes. Knowing that
really helped with the programming, since I knew I could include some
southern style dances that would be helped along by that sound.
Here’s the actual program from Sunday
night’s dance:
Blue Moon Boogie
Turkey’s Last
Straw
Big Set with
Calico Top figure
Mason and Garden
Bases Loaded
SQ: Double Bow
Knot
Rock the Cradle,
Joe
waltz
—
Silver Anniversary
Reel
SQ: Marianne
Maliza’s Magical
Mystery Motion
Fast Hands
waltz
The first two dances were contras; Blue
Moon Boogie gets everyone moving without too much complexity, and
Turkey’s Last Straw adds more basics. At the end of these two,
dancers had encountered these figures:
Four in line down
the hall
Balance and swing
(neighbor)
Gypsy and swing
Circle left
Balance the ring
Dosido
Balance the wave
Allemande
Promenade
Circle and pass
thru
The Big
Set, a southern Appalachian style dance, was something new to
most dancers, but they jumped in eagerly. Aided by a driving southern
tune played at a fast tempo, dancers spread out on the floor and had
a lot of fun with the Calico Top / Harlem Rosette figure, adding
ladies chain to the list of basic figures. We started the dance with
folks keeping their same partner, but halfway through the dance
turned into a mixer.
I picked Mason and Garden because it
honors the location of a famous Cambridge dance location a generation
ago, and because it introduced the hey for four; I had several other
dances with heys that I was hoping to use in my program later on, so
I needed to give new dancers some experience with that figure early
on. This dance, a composition by Al Olson, is simple, with one
wrinkle, a circle to the right, different enough to catch the
experienced dancers off guard although the beginners had no trouble
with it.
Double
Bow Knot is another southern Appalachian style visiting couple
square. This one involves increasing numbers of dancers, as the first
gent leads the line through a series of arches at the same time as
the last lady is leading the other end of the line in a circle around
the other dancers. It’s fast, and there are plenty of opportunities
to screw things up—we had a few sets where the lead gent kept
turning the circles the wrong way around—but all the sets figured
it out. You could hear the cheers coming from the floor when a group
got all the way through the figure. Lots of fun…
“Fast
Hands” is a dance by Diane Silver, a caller living in
Asheville, NC. It requires tight timing on a hey with hands, an
“allemande hey,” and it finishes with a series of
circle/rollaway combinations. To make that possible, I had included a
second dance with a hey (Silver Anniversary Reel), and a dance with
rollaways (Bases Loaded) earlier in the program. Silver Anniversary
also includes a Mad Robin figure, which apparently was new to some of
the dancers because there was an “ooh!” from the floor as
that figure was demonstrated, so commented, “If you like that
move, I heartily encourage you to check out your local English
country dance series!”
It was a delightful ending to a thoroughly
enjoyable evening. Many of the new dancers who’d been there for a beginners session stayed all the way through, and others who left at the break came by the stage to say how much they had enjoyed the evening. Thanks, BIDA organizers, for creating such a
supportive and energetic atmosphere. I look forward to another chance
to call there.