Lord of the Dance

A few weeks ago, at Warren's office Christmas Party, a fellow archaeologist/old time country musician friend of ours told us about the contra dance that his band played every first and third Friday of the month at Idlewild Presbyterian. One of the other archaeologist's wives and I perked up a bit at the mention of this and decided that we'd have to drag our husbands there asap.

I'm not sure what interested her about contra dance, but I have a good friend from Rhodes who is a big time contra dancer in Portland, Oregon. She also plays old time country music. Ever since she sent me her CD about seven years ago and told me about how much fun it is to (essentially square) dance, I have been intrigued.

Now, as you may have figured out by now, I like to kill a few birds with one stone when I can. So, naturally I pitched the contra dance story idea to the CA. They bit, and I started my research. I went to Idlewild a couple of weeks ago, solo, to check it out and take notes. I was way too shy to dance, despite many valiant efforts on the part of the regulars. I promised them I'd be back with my husband on the third Friday.

That was yesterday. I'd been looking forward to the dance all week, as had Warren. Or so I thought. Once our friends cancelled their participation due to a sick baby and I failed to convince anyone else to come with us, Warren's enthusiasm waned. Were it not for my looming deadline, I probably would have called the whole thing off.

We arrived a little late and missed most of the beginner's lesson. "Let's just watch," I said to Warren.

"Oh no," he said. "You dragged me here, and now we are going to dance."

We joined the others in the lesson and in no time we were promenading, swinging, circling round, and doing a star. And yes, we did some flailing and bumping into each other, but that was fun too.

Once the band started up, we did the first official dance--well most of it--then took a seat. My plan was to start interviewing people, but one of the instructors asked me to dance. I obliged and it was even more fun dancing with someone who knew what he was doing. (Everyone in general was very helpful.) He even twirled me!

When I got back to the chairs, I did get to interview a few people and as we were about to leave, a woman asked Warren to dance. He started making excuses, but I said, "He'd love to..." and pushed him onto the dance floor.

By this time I realized that my photographer hadn't showed up, so I snapped a few shots on the (very) off chance that I could get a printable one.


Created with Admarket's flickrSLiDR.

Once Warren's dance was over, it was half time. (About 8:30pm.) We planned to get some dinner and see a movie to maximize our child-free time, so we snuck out. We were both all smiles though and agreed that contra dancing was indeed lots of fun. (Even for uncoordinated folks like us.) Maybe next time we'll be able to convince some friends to join us.