D.C. campus dances the night away

By

Osborne Collegian Reporter

Walking into the Organization of American States, the smells of baked brie and made-to-order crepes meet your nose. You take someone’s hand, and walk into a room filled with ball gowns and tuxedos, where students and professionals alike are dancing to a live orchestra’s performance of Johann Strauss’s “Vienna Waltz.”

“It was very magical to walk into the atrium,” Hamilton said. “You have to process into the dance, and so you line up two by two in a promenade and then join the event. It was so surreal, and like walking into a ‘Pride and Prejudice’ movie.”

Decorated with white marble, grecian columns, and the flags of every country in North and South America, the Organization of American States building opens into a courtyard with water fountains and topiaries.

This may sound like a scene out of a Jane Austen novel or a 19th century period film, but in

Washington, D.C., it is the Intercollegiate Studies Institute’s annual Viennese Waltz. An invite-only event, the students on the Washington-Hillsdale Internship Program were invited to join the table of Matthew Spalding, dean of the Van Andel School of Government.

The ISI Viennese Waltz is the only white tie dancing event in D.C., and one of two waltz events, the other of which is hosted by the Austrian embassy. White tie attire for men requires wearing tuxes, while women wear floor length gowns. In fact, the ISI has been known to turn attendants away from the Viennese Waltz who do not wear the proper attire. ton said. “Dr. Spalding taught me how to waltz while we were there.”

“If a guy didn’t wear a tuxedo, he was not allowed to enter,” Hamilton said.

A lot of students drew inspiration from the past in their outfits, including WHIP student Meredith Kottom, who wore her grandmother’s dress from 1968.

Hillsdale College also hosted a brief dance lesson for Viennese Waltz at the Kirby Center prior to the dance on Saturday.

“While it’s not entirely necessary that you know how to dance, we hosted a pizza and practice night,” WHIP Undergraduate Program Coordinator Mary Greco said.

“Hillsdale College has a good relationship with the ISI, so each Spring we get to bring our WHIP students and a couple of the staff members to enjoy a night of dancing,” Greco said.

The waltz was very beginner-friendly, but dancers of all skill levels attended, according to Hamilton.

“The dress was a Chinese red and was sleeveless with an embellishment on one of the sides,” Kottom said. “I also wore some vintage earrings.”

Other WHIP students recycled prom dresses, or rented outfits. Junior Caleb Holm borrowed Spalding’s tuxedos.

Students on the Washington Hillsdale Internship Program had the opportunity to join hundreds of people in the dance, including students from the Naval Academy as well as experienced dancers from the D.C. area. The ISI also hired professional dancers to perform throughout the night.

“There were professional dancers there, and also people who had absolutely no idea what they were doing,” Hamil-

The waltz has been running for the past forty years, but it was canceled in 2020 or 2021 due to COVID.

“The ISI brings in professional dancers to the event,” Hamilton said. “It was very aesthetically beautiful, but you could also just do a basic waltz step if you didn’t know how to dance.”

However, participants don’t need to know how to dance to attend.

The ISI provided everything from cheesecake to creme brulee and chocolate mousse, as well as a crepe station, where you could order toppings and have a fresh crepe made for you, Hamilton said.

“If you weren’t a dancer, you could just eat your way through the dance if you wanted to,” Hamilton said. “It was literally dessert heaven.”

Old world, new jokes

By Catherine Maxwell Collegian Freelancer

A.M. Juster was a visiting fellow with the English department. He is a poet, a critic, a retired government official, and a lawyer.

Looking at your job history, you seem to be quite the renaissance man. How did you get into poetry and editing?

I wanted to do poetry from a pretty young age. I published my first poem when I was 8. I won a contest in the third grade and my Arbor Day poem got into the local paper. And I was pretty intent on that into college. And then a number of things happened, including a very discouraging poetry workshop I took with a big-shot professor, so I stopped for about 10 years. Then I decided I wanted to restart, but it took me a long time and I was in my early 30s before I found my poetry niche and what I wanted to do.

Why did you want to leave government work?

Sometimes you don’t have a choice. When you’re a political appointee, you come and go with the administrations. My last job actually, I think set a re- cord for durability because I’m the longest-serving Republican commissioner, and was the only one that did a full six-year term under the independent agency statute. It’s kind of a rough business so you don’t go in expecting long runs. So, from my vantage point, it was a good long run. I feel really privileged because I worked in all three branches of the federal government. I worked in senior positions for four presidents, and I reported directly to two different parties. It was a really interesting run. I don’t have any reason to complain.

Do you see any similarities between poetry and government work?

Oh, a little bit. Part of politics in poetry is persuasion. If you go back and look at history, you’ll get classical education. Training in rhetoric was believed to be the credential you needed to write poetry or to argue in court. To be a public servant, it was all basically considered the same. We segment things differently today, but I think a lot of the skills are the same. I’ve bounced back and forth and done different things using different parts of that toolkit. Early in my career, I wrote speeches and ghostwrote op-ed pieces for politicians.

When I needed to, I would step in and write things.

What is your favorite line of poetry that you’ve written?

I guess the fact that I’m having trouble answering the question says the answer is probably no. I don’t go back and reread my own poetry a lot. I don’t have it memorized the way a lot of poets do. Sometimes I feel like I should, but that doesn’t feel right to me. So when I have time, I read the poets I admire.

What is your favorite line of poetry that someone else has written?

I’m not sure. The poem that moves me the most is Richard Wilber’s poem “Love Calls Us to the Things of This World.” For me, it feels like a religious poem. And one of the things that’s great about it is it’s moved by very mundane, everyday scenery, and yet as he looks in and reflects on it he just takes it to a whole other level. Because it’s something from the 1950s that you wouldn’t see so much anymore. It’s an urban setting where there’s laundry out on the laundry line, and yet it’s incredibly beautiful. I tend to fall for those kinds of poems.