Devoted dancers practice tradition and welcome even the most hesitant newcomers
by Paige M. Travis
As the fifth man asks me to dance, I wonder why I haven't remembered sooner: I hate to dance. Ever since middle school, when the whole concept of being handled loosely by a sweaty young man while we swayed in place on the cafeteria parquet was both intensely compelling and seriously terrifying, I have avoided dancing with anyone who wasn't my really good friend or intimate partner. It's a senseless anxiety, I know, but one that's stuck like gum on a shoe, permanent and vaguely nauseating.
My uneasiness pronounced, I question my role here at the Laurel Theater on a Monday night, surrounded by contra dancers. My logic, I thought, was flawless: I'm a reporter. I don't participate. I observe and report. It sounded so safe, so unquestionable. But "I don't dance" or "I don't know how" aren't acceptable responses to these eager dancers. Up on the stage, Tim Worman is warming up his fiddle, and the plinks and twangs of banjo, mandolin, guitar and stand-up bass sound like the tunings of a mini-orchestra. The heat within the wood-paneled theater is rising from the friction of shoes and anticipation of the night ahead, full of swirling skirts, stomping and laughter.
Local musician and instructor Sean McCollough has brought his Appalachian music class from Maryville College. The 12 men and six women seem willing, if not enthused, to join the dancing already in progress. Greatly outnumbered by men, the college females are whisked onto the floor, while most of their baseball-capped co-patriots watch from my post in the balcony.
"It's very flirty," McCollough says as we watch the rows of dancers gather and part, couples join and separate, switch and swirl to the music of days gone by. To avoid getting dizzy, dancers maintain eye contact with their partners. "You can look at their shoulder, too," he adds. But I understand that the thrill of dancing is moving in tandem with another dancer, touching lightly at hand, hip and shoulder, creating the perfect tension and balance. I get it, but I don't want to do it.
McCollough learned to dance when he was 30. I'm 30. Outnumbered by enthusiastic dancers willing to spin me 'round the floor, I get the sneaking suspicion that my anti-dance guard can't remain up for much longer.
The weekly contra dance hosted by the Knoxville Country Dancers, an affiliate member of Jubilee Community Arts, is its own addictive community activity, but I gauge a certain anticipation at this particular dance because the Super Bowl of dances will soon be at hand. Many of these carefree dancers will attend the 30th annual Knoxville Country Dance Weekend held on Valentine's weekend. Dance weekend is like a Monday night contra dance multiplied times three. Hooked on the adrenaline provided by dancing, folks come from across the region and as far as Alaska to participate in daytime workshops and dances that can last all night.
Laurel's volunteer soundman, a nighttime dancer and daytime UT professor, Lou Gross remembers back to his first dance weekend in 1980. Back then, the gathering could be contained at the South Knoxville Community Center in Vestal. But for the past 10 years or so, the turnout of 400-500 dancers has overflowed to the ballroom at the University Center.
Friday evening begins slowly with the registration process. But, since you don't want to keep such a large group of folks with itchy feet waiting, the dancing begins at 8 p.m. with fiddler Tim Worman's Clearbranch warming up the crowd. After a break at 10 p.m. to coordinate housing between out-of-towners and their Knoxville hosts, the spinning continues until 12:30 a.m. with caller Kathy Anderson and music by the Clayfoot Strutters.
Part of the thrill of dance weekend is the chance to dance to out-of-town bands like the Clayfoot Strutters of Vermont, who, two weeks after playing Knoxville, will play the Pura Vida Dance Camp in Gran d'oro, Costa Rica. Gross says that many contra bands make a full-time living touring from dance to dance, of which there seems to be no shortage.
Saturday's schedule is packed with beginner and advanced workshops covering almost every kind of dance you can think of—square dance, Cajun, Swedish, English Country, polka, hambo, waltz—plus a smattering of non-dance classes in calling, music or writing. Those are held concurrently at UT, the Laurel Theater and the Candy Factory—locations chosen for their availability and their dance-friendly wooden flooring.
Saturday night marks the beginning of the true dance madness. Dancing continues at 8 p.m. with Misbehavin' and the Clayfoot Strutters until midnight, when contra switches to swing or zydeco at the UT Ballroom and the contra continues—with music by the New Lost Weasel Concern—up in Fort Sanders at the Laurel. "The midnight dance often doesn't start til one," Gross says, and it can continue until 3 or 4 in the morning. This intensive session leads to Seth Tepfer's favorite part of the weekend—Sunday afternoon.
"When everyone has been dancing all weekend long, everyone is in a place of exhaustion, yet revved up," says Tepfer, a dancer and caller in Oxford, Ga. "They are moving just a step away from dance trance. The exhaustion combined with the music and being surrounded by people with the same energy multiplied by the constant spinning and melding of the two halves of the brain brings many people into a state of natural high. No alcohol, no drugs, no hangover."
Sunday, which will begin with an Old Harp Sing at Laurel High School at 10 a.m., features open waltzing and contra dancing, finally winding up at 4 p.m. when cleanup begins.
Knoxville's dance weekend is only one of dozens that occur year-round across the country. Diehard dancers could take a road trips practically every weekend to kick up their heels and hear top-notch callers and the best string bands in the world. Tepfer just attended the SnowBall in Tampa, Fla. and plans to be at What the Hey? Weekend in Atlanta. These weekends are examples of big-deal contra dancing get-togethers with 200 or more participants, he says; there are also smaller events that focus on specific dances like the lindy or waltz.
Attempting to divine the true source and evolution of the terms "contra" and "country" can inspire a serious headache, which I'll spare you. Participants in a folk dancing bulletin board debated the etymology for multiple paragraphs and still came to no solid conclusions, even after consulting the Oxford English Dictionary. Let's just say that "contra" is not a bastardization of "country," and the name might originate with some mispronunciation (intentional or unintentional) between the English and French. Also, neither contra nor country dancing resembles the kind of country line dancing pursued in a big circle at the Cotton Eyed Joe.
If you've ever seen a period film based on a Jane Austen novel, you've seen court dancing, which looks very similar to contra dancing. Gross observes that most of the contra dances undertaken at the Laurel aren't traditional in the strictest sense. "All of these grew out of English traditional dances which grew out of court dances. Then there's this mixture of Irish, English and Scottish traditional dancing."
The music is a mixture, too, with new creations and interpretations mingling into a blend that's Appalachian in Southern and New England ways.
The overwhelming energy at the Laurel Theater, and, I suspect, at every contra dance in the free world, is of openness and welcome. You don't have to know specific steps in order to jump right into it. "If you can walk, you can contra dance," is a familiar phrase written on contra propaganda and heard from the dancers themselves.
Jim Turner has been involved in Knoxville Country Dancers since the 14th dance weekend in 1988. He was treasurer of the group for a while, and he's still on the board of directors. He subscribes to the walking theory.
"You just do whatever feels comfortable," he says. New dancers are frequently seen to be skipping, bobbing their heads up and down. The heads of seasoned vets, however, remain steady as they move smoothly across the dance floor.
I am one of those bobbing dancers. After Lou Gross convinces me to waltz, my whole objectivity excuse breaks down. Soon, I'm tripping from partner to partner, taking the hands that reach toward me, watching for my "shadow," and warding off dizziness by smiling into the face of whoever is before me. I'm delirious, laughing, out of breath. I have flirted and exercised. And, apparently, no one was harmed in the process.
You can't observe dancing like you observe music. Musicians don't compel non-musicians to play. But dancers see warm bodies of the opposite gender and send out an insistent hand. And since there are no strangers when you're contra dancing, that's the hand of a friend.
February 5, 2003 * Vol. 14, No. 6
© 2004 Metro Pulse
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