I especially like this quote: “It’s not about dancing. It’s about having fun.”
Just in case the article disappears (that URL doesn’t look like a permanent link to me), here’s the text:
IN THE cavernous space of what, by day, is the Redwood High School cafeteria, 24 adults – some young, some with white hair – step and twirl to the sounds of pop music and the voice of Eric Henerlau.
Henerlau is caller for the Tam Twirlers, a square dance group that has been meeting for 26 years.
His pleasing baritone – deep one moment, soaring the next – calls instructions to the dancers in perfect rhythm with the music. He even sings along with “Georgia On My Mind,” interspersing the lyrics with “swing your partner” and “do-si-do.”
The dancers follow his commands, the “squares” of eight people expanding and changing like the patterns in a kaleidoscope.
The Tam Twirlers, now more than 60 dancers strong, continues to grow at a time when square dance groups elsewhere seem to be fading. In 1980, Marin had 13 square dance clubs, three in Mill Valley alone; now only the Twisters and Buzzin’ Boots of Novato remain.
Why the drop-off? Henerlau says there are “100 different answers: callers retired or moved on; dancers matured and faded out.”
He says it is difficult to recruit new dancers when many who might enjoy square dancing are turned off by a leftover image of country bumpkins stomping to the sounds of cornball music. “People think it’s something your grandparents did.”
But he says square dancing today – especially with the Tam Twirlers, whose members are trying to change that image – is a new ball game.
Dancers can be young or old, retired professionals or young folks still wet behind the ears. Women no longer need wear billowing skirts, reinforced with huge petticoats, and men who don’t like traditional western shirts are welcome – as are the women – to wear whatever’s comfortable.
And the music? “People think it’s all ‘Turkey In The Straw’ or ‘Red River Valley,'” says Henerlau, a resident of Corte Madera with a “day job” at a high-tech firm in Sunnyvale. But he favors modern music, too, programmed on his laptop computer. He plays everything from rap to songs by the GoGos, Pink, Steve Miller, the Dixie Chicks and Madonna. “Songs like that give a sense of connection,” he explains.
He has an enthusiastic following.
“He could be a caller anywhere in the world,” says Jim Bowcock, who has danced with the Twirlers for years. “He stays close to home because he’s a committed family man.”
“He’s one of the top 10 callers in the country,” says Mary Carter of Mill Valley, who wears Henerlau’s smiling image attached to her Tam Twirlers pin. She calls him “wonderful, young, vibrant, charismatic.”
Carter and husband Nick have danced with the Twirlers for four years. A retired legal secretary, Mary had square-danced in grade school, but in the 19 years of her marriage to Nick, “we never went dancing at all.” When free coupons for square dance lessons came in the mail, she urged him to try. His response was: “I can’t dance.”
Hers was: “It’s not about dancing. It’s about having fun.”
Now both say square dancing is not only great exercise but great for mental stimulation. “You never know what the caller’s going to call; it’s always different,” says Mary. “When you have a talented caller like Eric, he bends our minds.”
Mary Carter, by the way, wears the traditional circle skirt and petticoats, an outfit some women sew for themselves, others buy at square dance festivals. She subscribes to the idea that dancers can wear what they want, but says the colorful skirts “look beautiful” at a festival, dominating the floor.
Marge and Jim Bowcock of San Rafael – she’s a convalescent-home nurse, he is retired from a cleaning and sanitizing company – had tried square dancing years ago, but with children to raise “couldn’t fit it into our lives,” he says. They tried again at the urging of one of Marge’s colleagues, and “we felt comfortable right away. The cameraderie was exceptional.”
“We were looking for something we could do together,” says Marge.
Now they square-dance every week at the Wednesday gatherings at Redwood High School, and on weekends at festivals all over the state. A week ago they were in King City, which has run its own festival for 24 years.
Jim likes square dance because “you don’t have to worry about your feet. It’s more a matter of mind concentration. You concentrate on the call,” he says.
“If you let your mind wander,” says Marge, “Eric catches you.”
At first the Bowcocks were intimidated by the need to memorize a big number of calls – Henerlau knows more than 400 – but by now they have mastered 100 of them. “Repetition helps,” Jim says.
Marge says that when they drive to Portland to visit a daughter, they used to take a book of calls with them, which they read aloud to each other.
On the dance floor, the three “squares” continue to dance. They are part of the 5 p.m. “New Dancer” group, which has been learning steps and calls once a week since September. At 7, a more advanced group comes in, and at 8, veteran dancers come for a wide-open hour.
Introductory workshops will begin again at 7 p.m. March 17; people who want to test the waters can take two classes free.
Henerlau, 50, has been involved in square dancing since his junior year at Novato High School when dancing was part of the physical education requirement. Someone gave him and his girlfriend – now his wife, Jennifer – a flier for a class in square dancing, and “we’ve been dancing ever since,” he says.
“”It’s just a blast,” he adds. “It gives people fun, excitement, enjoyment and a great sense of community. It’s a great equalizer. Everyone meets in the same place on the floor.”
He points out that it is the only “sport” in America where there’s no competition: “There are no championships in square dancing. You are not rated, you are not ranked. You just go out and have fun.”
“No one ever tries to one-up anyone else,” says Jim Bowcock.
Square dancing originated in the United States, though its roots are in French quadrilles and English country dancing. Modern square dancing got a huge boost in the 1920s, when Henry Ford built a dance hall near Detroit and established an instructional program that included radio broadcasts and classes in schools. A book about square dancing, written in the 1940s by Lloyd “Pappy” Shaw, pushed it further, and by the ’50s, Henerlau says, “it began to develop into an art form.”
Where once couples in a square danced one by one, now they dance simultaneously, often in complex and challenging patterns.
One of his gifts as a caller, says Henerlau, is his ability to see the spatial relationships of the dance. “Mathematically minded people love the complex choreography.”
He segued from dancing himself to being a caller for the joy of performing, he says – singing, creating, controlling what goes on on the floor. “I’m kind of a combination entertainer, choreographer and drill sergeant,” he says.
Henerlau’s wife, Jennifer, who works for a nonprofit organization in San Francisco, still dances occasionally, as does his son Richard, 20, a student at College of Marin. (Daughter Stephenie, 16, is a junior at Redwood and is a student of ballet.)
After 20 years, Henerlau’s enthusiasm for the dance has not waned.
To introduce the art to young people, he does a once-a-year series of classes – seven periods in a row on Fridays – for sophomore students at Redwood, 350 in all. Even if the students don’t thereafter decide to join his Wednesday sessions, he hopes they will remember square dance as “fun and exciting.”
He urges others to try it.
First, he says, it’s moderately priced: the fee for the New Dancer workshops in March will be $50 for 10 weeks’ instruction: “Where else in Marin can you have a great evening for $5?”
It’s a great way to meet people and make new friends. (He was the caller at a square dance for singles in San Francisco at which veteran dancers Pete and Diane Oser of Novato met. When the Osers married, Henerlau was in the wedding party.)
Square dancers feel at home all over the world: England, Sweden, Japan, Poland, Germany. “Square dance is a lingua franca; you can just walk in anywhere and dance. Whatever you learn here you can do there. The calls are the same all over the world.”
It’s fun. “The big hurdle is to try it out for one night. It will enrich your life socially. There is no other agenda, just dancing. You just laugh and move and have a good time.”