I started dancing square dances in upstate New York as a kid. Every Saturday evening in the summer local musicians and callers would run the dance. It was an easy way to have contact with the girls for a shy guy. In college in the 50s was the beginning of the club dance movement. I went to a local square dance one Saturday a month. They were still with a live band. I thought I was a good dancer, but here were all sorts of figures I had never heard of. I asked the best women dancers I saw and quickly picked up the various figures which were mostly new combinations of what I had already done. I danced a few contras off and on at various places, but really got into it when my wife and I moved to the Boston area in the mid 60s. There we could dance 3-5 nights a week with both contras and English. It was our recreation and exercise. I loved the contra community. There were family dances, pot lucks before some of the dances, adult dances. I didn’t like English to begin with because it wasn’t called, just talked through and one was expected to know it. One Monday after NEFFA few years later George Fogg ran an English dance where he called the dances for a while just like in contras. That was when I fell in love with English with its lovely music. Since then I have loved both as well as Scandi and Balkan dancing. To me, dancing of most any kind is great and I do it as much as I can. Most everywhere in the country I have danced the community has been so welcoming and friendly.
Bob Michigan
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