Robin Warner sits just inside the door of the Pittsfield Grange Hall, a simple white clapboard building on Ann Arbor–Saline Road, collecting admission. Gray-haired and dressed in a plaid shirt and jeans, he pauses to chat with regulars and welcome newcomers.
But Warner isn’t just minding the door at this “second Saturday contra dance.” He’s also tonight’s “caller,” which means he’ll be teaching and leading the forty or so dancers—an art he’s practiced for more than thirty years.
The small stage is overflowing with the musical instruments of the Pittsfield Open Band—an eclectic mix of fiddles, piano, banjo, guitar, woodwinds, bass, hammered dulcimers, mandolin, and percussion. As Brad Battey, a fiddler in a brown fedora, oversees the musicians’ setup, Warner moves onto the old wooden dance floor, gathers up the beginners, and walks them through a trial run of the first dance.
Contra, the style Warner is teaching, is particularly social, because couples exchange partners repeatedly during each dance. With a little guidance, anyone can jump in. Warner sets up two preliminary lines, women on their partner’s right, four persons long. Each pair of couples then forms a square, and Warner teaches them tonight’s first “figure.”
It’s called the “right-arm star,” and the dancers begin by reaching diagonally across their squares, grasping hands. On Warner’s cue, “circle left,” the two axles spin to the left; on “circle right,” they turn back to their starting places. The two squares reform into lines and promenade down the floor. Some couples form arches, and the others duck through them.
After Warner walks the dancers through the rest of the moves, he steps up to the podium, wireless mike in hand, and announces, “Hands four.” Everyone finds a partner, and the couples form two lines stretching the length of the floor. Most dancers are in their fifties or sixties, but many are in their twenties or thirties (dancers tend to drop out during their family-raising years). Everyone is dressed casually, in jeans or long flowing skirts. Only their black leather dancing shoes give away the regulars.
Warner starts off with “Jefferson and Liberty,” a dance whose title was borrowed from Thomas Jefferson’s 1800 election campaign song. The dancers then move briskly to a set of jaunty Irish tunes, interweaving, circling, stepping, and spinning their way up and down the lines. Warner’s calls fade when he’s sure that all the dancers know their parts.
The Grange continues to fill, dancers drifting in singly or in couples. A second double line forms, and one of the dancers, Ed Vincent, steps out to take his turn as caller (dances typically last about three hours, and are shared by two or three callers).
Vincent, who’s been calling for five years, is so passionate that he can’t stay on the stage. He moves between the lines, a broad smile on his bearded face. Unlike Warner, Vincent “lilts,” his voice tracking not only the rhythm but the melody, and he throws in some singsong banter. Vincent has the lines moving like a machine: flowing, spinning, and reforming, in perfect symmetry. Satisfied there are no stragglers, he reluctantly bobs back to the podium, his foot still tapping.
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European settlers brought a variety of folk dances to North America, many with complicated steps. In Europe, professional dance masters might have taught them, but in America’s backwoods and farms, that job evolved into “calling.”
Though contra dancing remained popular in New England, by the early twentieth century folk dances had all but disappeared in Michigan. Henry Ford, an enthusiast, tried to revive “old-fashioned” dancing in the 1920s, but with limited success. It was only in the 1970s that folk dancing enjoyed a comeback in southeast Michigan. A mix of New England transplants, folkies, and back-to-the-land types began organizing traditional dances, eventually expanding to historic locations like the Pittsfield Grange and Webster Community Hall.
Don Theyken arrived in Ann Arbor just as the traditional dance scene was blossoming. Theyken had grown up in Pennsylvania, a fan of folk and blues music. He remembers when dances at the Grange were packed to capacity, with three or four double lines. “When people ask how we managed to dance,” Theyken says, “all I can say is we did.”
Local interest in folk dancing has declined somewhat over the past thirty years. Still, well-attended dances, in a variety of traditional styles, can be found almost every week, mostly sponsored by the Ann Arbor Community for Traditional Music and Dance. Nor is there any shortage of talented callers.
Theyken, a caller for more than twenty-five years, says it is an old generalization that many of the men who get into contra dancing are engineers. “Dance draws technical types and has a mathematical precision that engineer types can relate to,” he explains. Sixty-eight, he recently retired from a career servicing electron microscopes.
Theyken started with contra and then took up Scottish Country (a similar folk dance style) and morris dancing (an English folk tradition where dancers, waving handkerchiefs, sticks, or swords, perform various choreographed figures). He also calls for English Country dances, a predecessor of American contra.
Callers choose the dance, select the tune or the way it’s played, and prompt the dancers in a timely fashion. Theyken concedes the prompts can become somewhat mechanical. But good callers are friendly and patient teachers, helping dancers, particularly beginners, to learn the figures quickly. Good callers also know something about musical structure, rhythm, and timing, and how certain pieces fit the mood of particular dances.
Theyken says a good caller “really watches the dancers” and “gives them what they need,” whether that be clearer instruction, a tempo change, or harder or easier dances. After all, if things break down on the dance floor, it’s the caller’s fault. Theyken likes to offer many dances during an evening, while paying attention to the feedback he gets from the floor—what’s causing the dancers difficulty, or whether he needs to spice things up.
Theyken enjoys writing his own dances and variations to keep things fresh. Perhaps the greatest compliment Theyken ever received was going to a contra dance in Belgium—and dancing to one of his own compositions. “Don’s Dawn Dance,” as it’s known, had been carried there by a caller from Washington, D.C.
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Carol Jacobs took up contra dancing in Detroit in the 1980s, but she didn’t think about stepping up to the podium until friends gave her a nudge six years ago. A piano and keyboard player, the fifty-two-year-old special education teacher believes her strong sense of timing and love of teaching helps her when running dances.
“Any good dancer who is motivated can become a caller,” she says. “The real challenge is being able to teach the dances clearly and concisely.” Jacobs brings a lesson plan of sorts to every dance, trying to anticipate what a particular group might like and adjusting based on the dancers’ response. Private gigs—for churches, weddings, or family reunions—are her favorite events because “there is no agenda—you just teach one dance after another and have fun.” For Jacobs, it’s the social dynamics of dancing, the interplay between dancers and the music, the inherent “flirtatiousness,” that drives her interest in calling. Jacobs likes to offer dancers smooth, flowing arrangements. One of Jacobs’s favorite figures is a “gypsy,” where partners can “ham it up” as they “stare into each other’s eyes and circle.”
The dance music is drawn from American, English, or Celtic sources. The band might start with a few jigs (like “Haste to the Wedding,” where the beats fall quickly in 6/8 time) and then step things up with a reel or two (such as “Liberty” or “Whiskey Before Breakfast,” in 4/4 time). Jacobs normally lets the bands have free rein. To break things up, it is not unusual for callers to drop out for a bit altogether, opening the floor to partner dances like the waltz and Swedish hambo, where couples, holding each other throughout, move and turn in steps of threes.
Drake Meadow, thirty-eight, is a teacher at the Ann Arbor Learning Community. “The Pittsfield Grange is a lovely, special place for me,” he says—and not just because he has been calling contra dances there for six years. He courted his wife, Nancy, at dances at the Grange; at their wedding reception in 2004, they danced a contra composed in their honor.
Now, on any month with five Fridays—this year, January, May, July, and October—Meadow calls a “Fusion” dance at the Grange. To mix things up, he slips in some Israeli and Eastern European folk dances, which usually are danced in big circles without partners. Once he’s got a dance up and running, Meadow, like most callers, finds it “meditative” to drop out and watch the dancers flow with the music.
Meadow is fascinated with the geometry of traditional dancing. “Contra and English Country,” he notes, “are based on repetitions of very elegant patterns.” Meadow particularly enjoys leading English Country dances, whose more complex patterns are set to eight bars of music, rather than the four in contra dancing. One of Meadow’s favorite English figures is a “hey for four,” where two lines of dancers interweave, forming three connected loops.
Meadow delights in the unexpected, but he doesn’t like to call traditional square dances, where groups of four couples are arranged into squares within which they execute various figures. For Meadow, calling squares is “kind of berserk,” with the caller forced to give almost continuous prompts.
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A steady breeze billows the curtains in the Webster Community Building’s second-
story dance hall. A converted cider mill, it sits kitty-corner to the historic 1830s Webster United Church of Christ. The floor is almost full, with two double lines of dancers. Don Theyken, sporting a bright red shirt and suspenders, walks among them, with note cards and mike in hand. There are more than a few beginners here, many appearing to be young college students. Theyken pauses during the walk-through to demonstrate some spinning variations then takes his seat with the band.
The Sharon Hollow String Band, a fixture on the local contra scene since the mid-1970s, tonight is composed of its founding member Garth Gerber on keyboards, Paul Winder on fiddle, and Myron Grant on guitar, mandolin, and harmonica. It offers up a mix of clipped New England–style and growly Appalachian melodies, along with some jazzy solo breaks. After three dances,
Theyken announces a dance called “Blue-Haired Girl.” The title’s reference
to aging draws good-natured groans from some of the older dancers. “Hey, I didn’t name it,” Theyken laughs.
On his cues, the dancers step together, circle, figure-eight, spin, and shuffle. Theyken says he’s asked the band to hold the tempo down for the beginners, but Sharon Hollow keeps it lively. There are some noticeable gaffes and missteps on the floor, but they’re met with a smile and a hand from the more advanced dancers.
Theyken likes to draw a distinction between traditional and “revival” folk dancing, which is what most local dances are. “Traditional folk dancing comes from a community,” he says. “For us, folk dancing is the community.” Not restricted to a country of origin or specific ethnic group, revival folk dancing is enjoyed for its simplest pleasures—exercise, fun, and the opportunity to meet new people.
The caller is the essential linchpin that holds the music and dancers together. “I just watch the dancers and try to be kind,” says Theyken, “push them in the right direction, and they do the rest.” After all, the night is never really about the caller—it’s about the dancing.
