Contra What? Toe-Tapping Writer Twirls to the Beat

I’ve always loved to dance. My mother was a great dancer. She used to tell me stories of her being the Queen of the Hop at Teen Town in Cahokia, Ill., and she taught me all her dance moves in our tiny kitchen in the home where I grew up. When I hear the slightest rhythmic noise, be it music or the hum of the dryer, I get happy feet. So when my West Coaster gal pal wanted to try a new-to-her dance hall and couldn’t get her husband to go, I readily volunteered.

Swing? Jazz? Jitterbug? Two-step boot-scootin’? Pick your poison.

“Contra dancing,” she said.

Contra what? Sounds illicit. My interest is peaked.

You see, years ago, long before Facebook and Twitter, people had to work a bit harder to connect with like-minded individuals. Folks often lived less densely, especially in rural farming communities where your closest neighbor may be several miles down the road. Since many hands make quick work, families would travel considerable distances to help each other with a large task (like raising a barn), then celebrate and socialize afterward (like having a barn dance).

As I understand, the dance of those times stemmed from European court dances collectively called “contredanse” or “contra dance” which were modernized by our Western world into American folk dances. The dances were wildly popular across the U.S. in the 1800s, then dwindled in fashion for several decades (we had to make way for the Flappers) until they began to regain in popularity in the mid-to-late 20th century.

Now, the traditional dance phenomenon is sweeping the nation once again with dance halls bursting at their proverbial seams from New York to L.A. I, too, have come down with an acute case of dance fever. John Travolta, look out.

Actually, it’s more “Seven Brides for Seven Brothers” than “Urban Cowboy.”

The dance is beautiful. Men and women form long lines (a set) running the length of the dance hall. As the live acoustic music plays, the couples simultaneously progress up and down the set in flowing movements, repeating the same steps with different partners throughout the formations. Some dances conclude with the couples making their way through the entire set and returning home together, while others end with the gent returning home with another girl. (Art imitating life, anyone?)

From a bird’s eye view, the movement is spectacular, if the dancers know what they are doing. The choreography is timeless with everyone twirling, ebbing and flowing in graceful unison.

Ah, but from the eye of the dancer, that’s the sense of community that is even more profound. The nature of the dance is to keep every dancer connected to the other. There are few instances where you are left to your own accord, for that’s where trouble begins.

One turn bends into another as a gent’s hand guides a lady’s hand to another gent. Everyone works together, wants everyone else to succeed and covers for them when they don’t by modifying their own steps to draw the straggler into the next formation. And everyone smiles. You can’t help it.

I’ll admit, I’m not a shy sort of gal, but the first time entering a room full of 100 bobbing strangers when you don’t know how to bob can be a bit intimidating. And what a motley crew! Doctors, lawyers, college kids, teenagers, accountants, professors, teachers, farmers, stay-at-home moms, married, single or single-again — you name it, they are there. It’s truly all-inclusive.

As the evening goes on, you learn about each other, who has spaghetti arms, who leads effectively, who is reserved, who adds flourishes to their step, who is very serious and who is just having fun. And before you know it, you’re not dancing with strangers anymore.

You begin to know their stories and they yours. There’s the student seeking diversion from a term paper. The widower not wanting to sit at home. The couple enjoying their 30th year of dancing together. The teenage boy hoping simply to get all his limbs going in the same direction at one time.

With nothing more than a few stringed instruments and a willing hand to say, “C’mon darlin’, let’s go for a spin,” the world goes ‘round in harmony. It’s simplicity at its finest.

And it’s happening right here in Northwest Arkansas. The VA Voluntary. Third Saturday of every month at 7 p.m. Come on down and raise a barn.

LISA KELLEY IS A WRITER, MASTER GARDENER, ANIMAL LOVER AND ALL-AROUND GOOD OL’ SOUTHERN GAL WHO ALSO HAPPENS TO PRACTICE LAW AND MEDIATE CASES IN DOWNTOWN BENTONVILLE.

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