Hoot and holler, step to the music

by Susan Mikula Campbell
Niagara Wheatfield Tribune, October 22, 2009

From left, committee members Glenn Wienke, Bonnie Haskell and Fran Haskell get ready for the Community Barn Dance to be held from 7 to 9 p.m., Saturday, Oct. 24, at the Sanborn-Lewiston Farm Museum, 2660 Saunders Settlement Road, Sanborn. Hosted by the Sanborn Area Historical Society and Sanborn Business and Professional Association, the dance is open and free to the public. (photo by Gerry Treichler)

Circle left, circle right and promenade on down to the Sanborn-Lewiston Farm Museum this Saturday, Oct. 24, for a Community Barn Dance.

“This is an activity for ages 7 to 77, with no experience necessary,” said Joe Kwiatkowski of Fredonia, “house caller” for the Queen City Contra Dancers of Buffalo. “There’s no fancy footwork. If you can walk to the music, you can do this. These dances were historically danced by farmers in boots.”

The free event, featuring live, contra-style music, is hosted by the museum and the Sanborn Area Business and Professional Association. Dancing starts at 7 p.m. in the museum’s new Les Read Building at 2660 Saunders Settlement Road, Sanborn, because as Museum Curator Linda Jackson points out, “It’s a little too cool to have it in the (real) barn this time of year.”

This is the museum’s second barn dance.

“Everybody seemed to have such a good time last time we had it (at the summer farm festival), we decided to have it again,” Jackson said.

Kwiatkowski, as caller, will be teaching the sequence of moves that make up the dances, having everyone walk through the steps before the live music is added by the band Viol Habits, also from Fredonia. Viol Habits features Kathy Petersen and Hannah Petersen on fiddle and Tim Cudney on bass.

In the “traditional” or “eastern” form of square dance, if you did any square dancing in school (Remember circle left, circle right, promenade, allemande and do-si-do?) this is what you did, Kwiatkowski said. No previous experience is necessary, as opposed to “western” style square dances, in which the callers make up the dance as they go along, and the dancers are expected to have gone to classes and studied the moves.

The dancing doesn’t always have to be in a square, with each side leading off and taking “the important part” in turn, he added. It can be done with a line of gents facing a line of ladies, as with the Virginia Reel, or in a circle, “kind of like a giant game.” In all cases, participants are walked through the limited number of moves first, then the caller leads the dance when the music begins.

“We try to do some hooting and hollering, too, because it’s supposed to be a fun kind of night,” Kwiatkowski said.

With both the dancing and the music, some is traditional; some is modern but written in the traditional style. Some have a French-Canadian influence; others a traditional English influence.

“In some sense, it’s almost a historical re-enactment of the kind of things that were done in this corner of the country 150-200 years ago,” Kwiatkowski said.

“In August, we had senior citizens dancing … and our happiest dancer at the end of the evening was a 7-year-old boy who danced every dance and had a great time,” he added. “It’s physical, but not exhausting. Some of the dances are a little more energetic than others, but a night of dancing is not an endurance test.  And it’s fun. We are not after perfection; we are after enjoyment.”