A number of months ago, the Spanish Ballroom at Glen Echo Park in the Washington DC area was closed for renovations. Friday night and Sunday night contra dances moved to the bumper car pavilion for the duration. (That’s where I danced when I had a chance to attend the Sunday night dance in February.)

Last month, the renovated Spanish Ballroom reopened.

Here’s a page with pictures from the last dance in the bumper car pavilion and the first dance in the Spanish Ballroom.

The site belongs to Eva Murray, who joins my list of crossover contra/MWSD dancers. She’s a contra caller, but she and her husband are dancing MWSD a couple of times a week (when it doesn’t conflict with a contra dance).

This quote from the sd-callers list:

The very worst callers are the ones you put in your Century book at convention, then you can know that you don’t want to go to their dances again 🙂

started me thinking about square dance Century Books. These are basically autograph books, where dancers collect callers’ autographs. I’ve signed a few and felt mildly flattered…but now I’m wondering if maybe I should feel insulted .

There’s very little online on Century Books. There are a couple of sites with definitions of square dancing terms:

• Valley Trailers
• Farmers and Charmers

and a couple of European (non-English) sites (maybe explaining strange American square dance customs?).

There’s also a reference in the publicly-accessible sd-callers archves from 1997 in an ever-recurring thread on partner/neighbor trade from waves:

What would happen? Probably most of the dancers would ignore the word “partner” and the sides would trade with each other. They might also make a notation in their Century Book, “Don’t attend any more of his dances.” Whenever I dance to a different caller and get his sig, I also grade them on a scale of A – F.

This one’s a quote from a caller’s husband. Dottie Welch is a Canadian caller (no website that I can find) from Nova Scotia. Her husband, Gary, is an astronomer. Here’s what Gary has to say about square dancing:

Although not a competitive activity in the usual sense, square dancing is definitely a “team sport” in which 8 people work together to execute intricate geometrical sequences in time to music. The building blocks (individual “moves”) are learned, but dancers do not know how the caller will put them together until it happens. Successful completion of a difficult sequence demands total concentration, and leaves a wonderful sense of accomplishment. Dancing to a talented caller who combines demanding choreography with good music is an exhilarating experience.

From Gary’s site.

I visited Keith Rubow’s site again (because of the MP3s from the AACE convention) and liked this quote:

So what is the fascination of this activity? It is the endless variety of moves and formations. The caller gives the dancers a “call” to do. The dancers (all eight of them) have to figure out how to execute that call form the formation they are in, all while dancing to the beat of the music. There are countless formations (positions of the dancers) with names like lines, columns, boxes, diamonds, 1/4 tags, hourglasses, galaxies, butterflies and blocks to name just a few. The formation changes continually and flows from one formation to another as one call after another is executed to the beat of the music. At least that is the theory. Sometimes squares “break down”. This happens when one or more dancers fail to execute their part properly. Suddenly everyone is standing around wondering what happened. Oh well, just make lines, or square up and wait for the next sequence to start. It is expected (especially at the higher challenge levels) that no one can get it all. But it is so sweet when a square works well together and everything just “clicks”, nailing sequence after sequence.

I just found this page offering recordings of the 2003 Academy of Advanced and Challenge Enthusiasts. Cool!

Here’s a square dancing benefits page on a site belonging to a Swedish software company. I guess the crew must be a square dancer.

On the same page, there’s a link to an online version of the CALLERLAB Foundation‘s brochure from the late 90’s. Too bad the page is marred by an ad for an online casino…

The same brochure (with difference pictures and no casino ad) is available here.

I’ve been online (a Lurker, mainly) since the early ’80’s: first BBS’s, then usenet, now email lists and forums. So I’ve seen most of these characters…and I gotta say, this site hits it. No names here (although I have my favorite Eagle Scout).

Today’s Foxtrot comic strip made me laugh out loud, mainly because I’m a (true confession coming here) Diablo 2 LOD addict.

We were in the car, driving to a square dance, semi-listening to the radio. I heard an ad…I have no idea what it was for, but the catch phrase was something like:

“Use your mind, lose your behind”

Seems like a great square dance slogan to me.