ARTS + CULTURE
Step By Step
An Evening at the Contra Dance
By Clay Lester
L
ike a modern day Noah, an older gentleman lines everyone up in pairs of two. Facing my partner, an energetic young lady in her seventies, I allow a moment to orient myself to my surroundings. The open space of the Berea Folk Center, exposed wooden planks reaching toward a central point high overhead, has a cathedral-like quality—not all that different from how I imagine the ark may have looked from the inside. The inhabitants of this vessel appear to be as diverse an assortment of sizes, shapes, ages, and backgrounds as any of Noah’s travel companions. The attire ranges from casual/comfortable/quirky to almost formal in some instances. One would be hard-pressed to find another setting with such an array of characters, save for central casting. As I watch a dapper fellow on the sidelines slip out of his street shoes and into his dancing shoes I look down at my aged Chuck Taylors and wonder if I’ve made a huge mistake. “Nobody was born knowing how to contra dance,” encourages George Oberst, founding member and current chair of the Contraire Dance Association of Berea, “but it’s not too hard to learn.” George explains that modern contra dances, with regional incarnations owing as much to their local indigenous cultures as to their historical influences, evolved from
English country dance. “English country dance had its very definite purpose at the time it was most widely practiced. It was a way to facilitate courtship.”
“Contra dancing has been a constant part of CAP volunteer life...for the significant portion of us that have (tried it), it ties us all together.” As one gathers from Jane Austen novels and film adaptations, English country dance is squarely on the formal end of the dance spectrum. Rigid social expectations and proprietary norms allowed for minimal contact between males and females, and this is reflected in the somewhat stiff, highly choreographed dance style. Far from stuffy, however, these dances held in the large halls of sprawling country estates represented an opportunity for mixing, mingling, and socializing that would have otherwise been viewed as unfitting the youth of the age. Some of these early English country dances
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