The DC Lambda Squares is Washington DC’s gay and lesbian square dance club. This week, they’re profiled in Washington DC’s Metro Weekly magazine:

Lambda Squares: A Community Profile

In case the link disappears:

Mission: Provide opportunities for members and guests to socialize around square dancing activities within the lesbian, gay, transgender and bisexual communities.

Founded: 1981

Number of Members: Approximately 90

How to Join: Beginners are required to take a square dancing class, which are offered in April and September. More advanced dancers are welcome to join anytime. Dues can be paid by yearly, seasonally or at each dance. It is $155 for the year or $8 for each dance.

Background: Abe Feldman, vice president of Lambda Squares says his first square dance was probably his most memorable. “It was my first time in a room full of people square dancing. The energy and the scope were just amazing.” Feldman has been square dancing ever since. “I love the dancing and the people are just terrific.”

Contact: Call 202-314-5737 or e-mail info@dclambdasquares.org.

Next Event: Cupid’s Valentine’s Dance Bash on Wednesday, February 11 at 7:45 p.m. at the First Congregational United Church of Christ, 945 G Street NW.

Here’s some really good publicity for Eric Henerlau‘s group, the Tam Twirlers, in the Marin Independent Journal: Marin dancers square but hip

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.”

I normally avoid politics (along with religion and sex, of course) at square dances. But here’s a story about democratic square dancers in Arizona: Democratic gays dance to different tunes.

Just in case the link goes down, here’s the story:

Seth Levine has been calling square dances for gay and lesbian enthusiasts in this desert city for 15 years now.

It’s late on Sunday afternoon in the Lawson Hall of the Augustana Lutheran Church, and – hand in pocket – he is on the mike, intoning the moves for the dancers to follow.

There is cake and soda to keep the 30 or 40 members going through their laid-back practice session. But while they lock hands and spin in time to “Love Lifted Me”, they have some rather more violent emotions simmering when it comes to politics.

“I hate Bush more than I have hated any politician ever. It makes me physically sick to see him on television,” said 39-year-old Linda Fitzgerald, one of the three lesbian co-founders of Arizona Gays 4 Dean, a Yahoo! Groups discussion forum.

But she’s been going through another crisis in recent days that’s tested her loyalty to the former Democratic front-runner.

“He was the man, then along came [Wesley] Clark with a better resume, and then [John] Kerry looking more presidential, so we all began flip-flopping…and then there was the scream,” she said.

Her faith is basically restored, and she was canvassing this weekend for Dean, though she still can’t understand how he “blew $40m in two states” and mismanaged the huge lead he had accumulated before the Iowa caucuses.

Her concern is backed up by yesterday’s latest poll from the Arizona Republic newspaper which puts Kerry ahead on 29%, Clark second with 20% and Dean trailing behind on 12%.

But all is still to play for, because in Arizona – the first test in the 2004 campaign of voting patterns in the US west – 22% of primary voters say they are still undecided.

The state’s growing population carries the second largest number of Democrat delegate places up for grabs in tomorrow’s seven-state contest. It voted Bush in 2000, but went for Clinton in 1996. In this polarised nation, it has become a proper swing state, although registered Republicans outnumber Democrats 41 to 35.

As they bob and weave in time to the country beats, the Desert Valley square dance party members spend time between numbers outlining who they want to see oppose their hated president.

“I was just talking to my mother, who’s a devoted Republican,” says Bahney Dedolph, 49, who left her husband – a military man – a few years ago for a new lesbian life in Phoenix.

“She says that Dean scares her, but that now she quite likes John Kerry. We need a candidate who’s not going to scare my mother. The key thing is just to beat Bush.”

Levine agrees. He was a Deaniac, but now he’s swinging towards Kerry. Another dancer who saw one of the senator’s recent “up close and personal” television appearances agrees that the Vietnam veterann is the man of the hour.

But the feeling that it was Dean who put backbone and passion back into the Democrat offensive leaves many among this cross-section of gay voters committed to him.

Sucking on a Marlboro, 40-year-old Tom Woodcock is still not sure who he will back tomorrow. He is more worried about the fight ahead, and the fact that the local economy is on an upswing that he expects can only help the Republicans.

“I sell computers to restaurants, and I’ve definitely noticed the upscale places – where people have to spend a bit more money – they’re doing well again,” he said.

Tom’s partner, Chuck Bjore, commutes up to square dance practice from the liberal citadel of Tuscon, two hours to the south. He is that rare thing in the gay community – a card-carrying Republican.

“I stay Republican partly so I can vote for moderates when we have primaries and other races, but overall I think Bush is doing a reasonable job,” he said, a comment which draws a wince from a nearby listener.

“If they could just drop the religious right and all that homophobia, I’d vote Republican in a heartbeat,” said 39-year-old Allan Kroll.

Bush has effectively written-off the gay vote because he can’t afford not to. So anxious is he to keep the evangelical millions on side, that he has hinted at changing the constitution to outlaw gay marriage.

States like Arizona are important for other minority groups that both sides need to impress. Hispanics represent 30% of the population, and the president has recently announced a plan to give legal status to millions of undocumented immigrants.

Here at the western edge of the tense contest to select a challenger, the bitter cold of the northern primaries has given way to a new, sun-drenched vista of possibilities. But a resounding Kerry victory tomorrow will be a clear sign that US Democrats are putting tactical thinking ahead of the passionate community-building of the past 18 months as personified by the former governor of Vermont.

create your own visited states map
or write about it on the open travel guide

It’s a lot more limited if I just do states where I’ve called:

I’m an internet junky; I admit it. But it gets boring flitting from website to website to see if anything new has been added. So I’ve jumped on the idea of RSS or XML feeds; I use NetNewsWire Lite to check various feeds and let me know if there’s new stuff. And yes, SquareZ does have an RSS feed; the link is over on the left-hand side below the CALLERLAB donation link.

So anyway, when I found (through a link in some weblog that I read, naturally) PubSub. This service provides an RSS feed of searches on weblogs for terms I choose. So I now have an RSS feed for weblogs mentioning: “square dance” OR “square dancing” OR “contra dance” OR “contra dancing”. You can probably use it too: Square and Contra RSS Feed.

So, after all that, here’s what came through today:

contra means line, i think

Tonight I had to photograph what was essentially a square dance somewhere in Webster Groves. I suppose they waltzed and did the “contra,” too, but unless you’re familiar with English country dancing, you would be as lost as me when it came down to the details. Also, I can’t hear the word “contra” without thinking of A) The Iran-Contra affair (which is filed next to the French and Indian War in my head as far as poorly named historical events are concerned) and B) The classic Nintendo game.

The people there were from all over Missouri and Illinois, dancing like mad to music from a band that consisted of two old guys playing the fiddle and guitar and a 16-year-old girl from Chicago who played the violin. It’s hard to take pictures in a room where people are flailing around to bluegrass or old-time fiddle music or whatever it is, and as such, I was hit repeatedly by flannel-covered arms and black Mary Jane shoes, and since I bruise just thinking about running into stationary objects, I’m sure my body will not be in presentable shape for the next couple of weeks.

Men high on fiddle music and promenading kept asking me to be their partner. I told them I didn’t want to compromise my journalistic integrity. Then I glanced down at my notepad, filled with scrawlings of the names of the faces I had photographed. I read, “old man, grey hair, hearing aid, wearing kilt and big gold earring. High school son wearing same. Crazy look in eyes.”

I waited until after I had left the premises before I started cracking up. You gotta love passion, even if it’s for something no fourth-grader has ever not made fun of.

There was one comment:

I went on a pre-orientation program at Wash U, and one night they herded us together and announced that we would learn how to square dance. After I got over the humiliation it turned out to be really fun. Highly recommended, even.

There’s been a discusson on rec.folk-dancing about a particular traditional square: Crooked Stovepipe. Along with a lot of information about the dance, Bill Martin put up a RealAudio file of Ralph calling the dance: Crooked Stovepipe to the tune “Crooked Stovepipe.”

How about women in full square dance attire jumping into the water? Check it out here. I think these are pictures from a European event. I wonder why it’s mostly women jumping in while still in square dance outfits…or maybe the photographer didn’t think men jumping in are very interesting.

Is it real or is it Photoshop?

This one’s my favorite: windsurf square:

After looking at the photographer’s home page on Webshots, I think he might be a wet petticoat fetishist…he really likes women in petticoats or formal attire jumping into water. So where’s the market for petticoats? Square dancers and fetishists…hmmmm….