By Jane Valencia
One late afternoon, I showed up to dance. I’d been working all day, and felt I had two left feet. I had never contra danced before, yet I was willing to stumble my way through. Three musicians opened the session with a sweet waltz. I put on a lei to designate that I was a robin, as you are either a lark (lead) or robin (follow), and partnered with kindly folk who were more experienced. As is usual for an Island event, I recognized many who were there, and met a few others.
Soon, Doug Dolstad – who spearheaded contra dance on Vashon and serves as its caller – walked us through the first dance, naming and explaining the sequence of moves, or “figures.” I was not always sure which way to go, but my partners gently guided me. With the second dance, I discovered that many of the moves were now familiar. Doug introduced a few new ones. Within a short spell, I wasn’t doing too badly!
And so it went: wonderful live music, Doug’s cheerful and patient calling, and twirling and shifting through the forms, changing partners – in short, dancing! In time, I hit my saturation point (my two left feet seemed to have become four), and I chose to soak in the dancing from the sidelines.
I was hooked!
Made up of couples in groups of four or in two long lines, contra dance has its origins in 17th century English, Scottish, and French country dancing. Anchored by fiddle, and often including other instruments such mandolin, guitar, flute, accordion, the music tends to be Irish, Scottish, Old-time and French-Canadian folk tunes.
What brought Doug to contra dance?
Doug grew up within a family of dancers. His parents particularly enjoyed Scandinavian folk dancing, and his dad’s parents were square dancers. “I grew up in that awareness of people going off to dance and then having dances at our place.” Doug’s grandparents, Kate and Paul C. Land, hosted some dances on their patio.
As a student in New England, Doug found contra to be popular. While working in a Student Conservation Program on the Maine coast, he and a group went to a nearby island. “We ended up at a little building like this,” Doug gestures at the Havurah, “where they were doing a contra dance.” The supervisors, who were locals, knew the dancers, and Doug joined in on the piano. “It was great fun. So I always thought that I would like to do that. I’d like to be able to set up the conditions for people to come and dance.
“And I also thought that contra is an easy enough dance that people can do it without a huge amount of training, and where people kind of expect chaos – somebody to turn left instead of right – for chaos to be part of the experience. It tends to evoke a lot of laughter.”
Many years later on Vashon, Doug saw contra dance as an antidote to the post-COVID social landscape, where, he notes,”touching anybody became verboten – dangerous.”
Many kinds of dances do not involve partners or touch. “But I think there’s something really special that happens when people actually hold hands with one another. Even in a contra dance where everybody’s all holding hands in a line and walking toward another line doing the same thing – it just can’t fail to evoke people smiling. There’s just something magical about it. So I wanted people to stay in contact with that kind of way to relate.”
Doug had been prepared to use recorded music for the dances. “But as it turns out, Karen Dale and Lawson Cannon were enthusiastic about playing. Karen has been a great partner. She makes our posters and she arranges most of the musicians.
“The whole point is really to get together and have fun. What we’re lacking probably is a meal. It would be great to have a meal, and then dance together. Or I could imagine doing a work party, and then at the end of the work party having a dance.”
Doug, a multi-generational Islander, elaborates:
“My grandfather, Paul C. Land, used to work at the Vashon Sand & Gravel Co gravel pit that his father, Paul Land, started with H. S. Corbin. When they finished work – and these were long 10- to 12-hour days – he would grab this heavy Victrola and walk five miles to a hall like this, to the Grange or some place, where that would be the music for the dance, where people would come. I don’t know if there’s a society on earth that doesn’t dance in some way.
“It’s fun to be part of that. It’s fun to think of all the many generations of humans that in some form or another have – maybe call it – ritualized the sacred. They get in touch with something else – it might be just joy, it might be just laughter – but with something that enlivens them and connects them to one another. Because dance really takes advantage of humans’ incredible ability to coordinate. It’s really what we do well as social animal. In this case, it’s a skillset that helps to connect people in a community.
“And lots of things happen in the margins where people are not dancing. So they’re stepping outside or getting some refreshment, and they chat with somebody. And then you meet that person in another context on the Island, and the roles change. In one role, somebody is somebody’s teacher, but in the very next scene, they’re patients, or something like that. The person who’s been a leader in one scene in the community is a follower in another.
“That’s a kind of textured layer of community that I don’t think a lot of communities have, but I think it’s a sign of health – the different roles that we play in different social arrangements.”
Choosing to be a lark in this dance or a robin in the next. Changing forms and changing partners, the constant meeting up, parting, and then meeting again. I can see how contra dance both reflects and nourishes healthy and joyful community. We need that.
Doug says, “In a community, back in the day when there were fewer options, the idea that there was a dance and enough people knew how to do it was a big deal. It was a real break from very long days that most people spent just staying alive. Now, we have such mobility and so many options that it’s not as automatically prioritized that way.”
Perhaps it’s time to shift that back to that priority. Contra dance on Vashon would be a wonderful start.
Sound like fun? The next dance is Saturday, March 21st, 7-9 PM at the Grange Hall on the north end of the Island. A hat will be passed to cover the hall’s rental fee and musicians. Get on the mailing list to get notifications of future dances. Contact Doug at dpdolstad@gmail.com.
More dancing! As part of the Island Irish Fest, a Ceili dance will be held on Saturday, March 14th at 4:30 at Snapdragon. Doug will be calling that dance, and Karen and Lawson will be playing. Other great musicians will be a part of that Fest.
