Square dancing’s a living, breathing thing

Square-dance caller Nicole Ball (left) flatfooting with The Old 28s.

If you haven’t square danced since fifth grade, you don’t know what you’re missing.

“It’s a traditional thing that anyone is able to do,” said dance caller Nicole Ball, “and it shouldn’t stop. It’s a living, breathing thing that needs room to breathe.”

In the Catskills, before recorded music came along, square dancing was part of the glue of local communities, and the tradition has never stopped, partly thanks to the Catskills Folk Connection (CFC), headed by Ginny Scheer of Roxbury. This year has seen a leap in the number of CFC-sponsored dances held in Ulster, Delaware, and Schoharie counties.

At a recent dance at Reservoir United Methodist Church in Shokan, people who have been square dancing since the 1960s were joined by adventurous young people delighted to pick up the steps, often for the first time. “We’re perpetuating square dancing,” declared Scheer, “not reviving it. It never died out.”

She gives two reasons for the longevity of the tradition. “It’s a way to build community, and not just for a town. We’re all looking for the sense of community that comes with square dancing. When you deal with each other in rhythm, with the music, it enables us to open to each other.”

I know just what she means because I went to the Shokan dance.

“Swing your partner,” Ball called out, “and now swing your corner.” The gent to my right looked in my eyes, hooked his arm through mine, and we stepped in a lively circle, no longer strangers.

When someone was slightly confused by a call, and I ended up paired with a woman of a certain age, we smiled at each other and rolled with the calls, age and appearance suddenly irrelevant.

Everyone gets a turn

Another benefit of square dancing, at least in the traditions of the eastern U.S., Scheer noted, is that it’s really democratic. “The most knowledgeable couple may start out as couple number one, but everyone gets a turn,” she explained. The steps are simple enough that anyone can pick them up in a few minutes, but the energy of the music and the movement keep the dancers engaged. In the modern world, couples can be composed of any genders, and when there’s a deficiency of gents, ladies don’t mind being partners.

In the mid-1900s, Delaware County fiddle virtuoso Hilt Kelly was calling dances multiple times a week with his band, the Melody Boys. In the 1990s and early 2000s, the CFC, basically two folklorists dedicated to preserving local traditions, supported Hilt through his waning years, driving

him to gigs with a later band, the Sidekicks, when his eyes were failing. They also helped him train younger musicians and callers, including John Jacobson and Dane Scudder, who perform with the Tremperskill Boys.

Since Hilt’s passing in 2015, the CFC has continued to sponsor dances across the Catskills.

When the pandemic forced a slowdown, Scheer maintained a mailing list of dancers who watched Zoom presentations on the history of square dancing. As soon as it was safe, she leaped back to booking bands into church and fire halls.

Gary Mead, a Margaretville woodworker, remembers learning to dance as soon as he could walk. His parents, who met at a Hilt Kelly dance in West Kill in 1948, took him and his siblings to many community dances while they were growing up on a farm in New Kingston.

“We just learned it because we were there,” said Mead. “In those days, a lot of folks just learned it that way. It’s a good thing we’re keeping the tradition going. It’s comforting to see these young folks being interested.”

At a recent dance in Margaretville, several couples in their 20s and 30s showed up.

Improvise with your feet

Ellie Webster of Hyde Park hadn’t square danced since fifth-grade music class. When a poster about the Shokan dance appeared at their job site, Webster and a friend decided to go check it out. The two wore effervescent smiles every time I looked across the square.

“It reminded me of people back home in Idaho,” Webster said. “And it wasn’t hard to learn.”

Ball, the mother of two small children, began taking square-dance classes in New York City after seeing cloggers perform at the Newport Folk Festival. “I fell in love with the music, learned the dance, and I picked up calling later on.”

At Shokan, backed by a band called The Old 28s, she also demonstrated flatfooting, which looks to be somewhere between Celtic clogging and modern tap dancing. Between square-dance numbers, she taught the dancers the basics of flatfooting, an improvisational technique that people sometimes practice during lulls in the group dances.

“You don’t need a lot of fancy steps to have fun improvising with your feet,” she said. “Just show up with an open mind and have fun.”

She and her partner, a fiddler, perform together, often at weddings, where the guests may be surprised to find themselves lining up in squares. “I like springing square dancing on unsuspecting people,” Ball said. “A lot of people think they’re too cool to square dance, but it’ actually really fun.”