How often have you heard the benefits of square dancing during class sessions? Exercise, new friends, mental stimulation and the list goes on. But, has anyone ever claimed the possibility of romance and marriage?

Well, that is just what two of our current kittens experienced when they agreed to take square dance lessons this past fall. Mary Ellen Butler and Eric McClellan were invited by Rita Wilbert and Beth Burgwardt, respectively, to join the Copy Cat square dance class last September. When they saw each other at the second class, they realized that they had known each other when they attended the same church for 10–15 years, but had not seen each other in 25 years.

They exchanged contact information and had their first date on October 20 when they made a day trip to Niagara Falls. On the way home they missed every exit for Rochester until they reached the Palmyra exit, demonstrating how much they enjoyed each other’s company.

On November 4, the couple visited a local park and stopped back at Eric’s place for a cup of coffee. Mary Ellen opened a new bottle of creamer by removing the plastic ring that sealed it. Eric picked up the plastic ring and asked Mary Ellen to give him her hand. Although she was puzzled, she put out her hand whereupon Eric slipped the plastic ring and asked her to marry him. She accepted. The next week they went ring shopping and got their marriage license.

On November 12, during class Ron Brown seemed to be demonstrating the California twirl. As he raised Mary Ellen’s hand he pointed out the sparkler on her finger; clever way to tell the class and angels about the new engagement.

On Sunday, November 24, they attended church together. At the end of the service the pastor asked everyone to be seated and announced, “We are going to have a 12-minute announcement; we’re going to have a wedding.” Eric had alerted his children the day before, but Mary Ellen had kept their plans a secret. Ironically, her brother and two sisters happened to be in church that Sunday.

The whole congregation stayed for a reception including cake and light refreshments coordinated by Mary Ellen.

Do you think we should add ROMANCE as a benefit of square dancing?

Jackie Rogers

Cloverleaf Squares will be hosting an anniversary dance celebrating fifty years as a square dance club on March 15 of this year. To have something special leading up to and following the event, we decided to invite different callers to our regular Sunday dances in a program we are calling the “Cloverleafs Anniversary Trail-Through.” As it turns out, the Rochester area is rich with great callers, ranging from long-time experts to aspiring beginners.

Earlier this year, Jim Gotta (Fairport, NY) called at our Sports Theme night on January 26. He started dancing in 2010 and began calling in 2012. He dances A2 and has begun Challenge dancing. Ron Brown (Cicero, NY) called for us on January 26. He started dancing in 1987 and has taught the Copy Cats’ classes for 28 of his over 30 years as a caller. For eight years, he was the Superintendent for Square Dancing for the New York State Fair. Keith Harter called for our Class/Club Valentine’s dance last February 9. He and his cuer wife, Jeanne Harter call and cue in the Central New York Region. Keith currently calls for the Pairs N Squares in Liverpool, NY. Ray Tompkins (Avon, NY) called for us last February 16. He is the caller for the Dalton Gang in Dalton, NY. He started dancing in 1969 and began calling in 1973. He was away from dancing for 30 years but fortunately started calling again six years ago. On February 23, Gil Porter (Fairport, NY) called at our Mixer dance. He started calling in 1965 and has called throughout New England. He dances DBD and A2. The March 2015 Promenader called him the “newest phenom” in our area. He regularly calls at Village Squares. Bill Ryan (West Seneca, NY ) will be calling at our Mardi Gras dance on March 1. He began calling in 1964 and calls for the Batavia Silver Stars and Waterwheel Squares. The Cloverleafs are glad he is traveling East to be with us. Ron Schweitzer (Memphis, NY), calls for the Fun Bunch in Auburn and will be traveling West to be with us as an Anniversary Trail-Through caller on March 8. He is a relatively new caller who has begun to add some A1/A2 calls to his repertoire.

March 15 is the club’s 50th Anniversary dance at the Diplomat Event Center, a party house at 1956 Lyell Avenue in Rochester. Both Mike Callahan, our long-time caller, and Linda Liberti, our former cuer will be returning from Arizona to be with the club. We also expect guest caller, Bruce Shaw, who called in this area for many years and was the Cloverleafs caller and instructor in 1970 when the club was formed.

There will be two more callers in our Trail-Through program. The first will be Dave Eno (Preble, NY) who will call on March 22. Dave is an international caller who calls for the Shirts ’N’ Skirts and the Enovators. He teaches and dances at the ‘C’ level. Relatively new caller, Richard Rosenfield (Ithaca, NY) will call on March 29. He is the caller for Ithaca Sunday Squares and frequently calls for Penn Yan Friendship Squares. He holds square dance workshops for Penn Yan Friendship Squares.

Submitted by Carl Webster

At the Village Squares Christmas party in December, Peter and I were proud to honor Carl and Susan Thomas with the Circle of Service Award. The circle is the symbol of service to square and round dancing and it’s designed to be worn with pride by the dancers who receive it because it recognizes their significant contributions to square dancing. Circle of Service is a ‘dancers only’ award and it is always presented by a previous recipient.

Carl and Sue served as Presidents of Village Squares twice and they have been our treasurers for many years. With Susan’s MBA in Finance and Carl’s law degree from George Washington, the analysis and precision of Village Squares financial records would be the envy of any Fortune 500 company.

Carl is wonderfully witty and creative. He once suggested ‘Banana Dance’ as the theme for a Village Squares dance. Each week as the date of the dance approached, Carl took a few moments at the microphone to explain—in a hilarious deadpan—what we were to do with our bananas while dancing in the Banana Dance.

In 2016, at the Archangel School hall packed with square dancers, callers, friends and members of the Carmen family celebrating Jerry Carmen’s 50 years as caller, Carl reviewed Jerry’s career and gave a moving tribute. For many years, Carl has written the Village Squares Club News for the Promenader and in that role as well as in many others, he’ll be an impossible act to follow.

Whenever there is something to be done, Susan is the ultimate volunteer. She organized Village Squares’ Trail Back dinner in the Fall and our Christmas party and dinner in December even though she was still recuperating from a serious operation. After we were forced to move from East Rochester, she found the venue where we now are dancing and takes care of coordinating our dance schedule with the church. She also is a conscientious and computer-savvy Promenader proofreader.

Village Squares are incredibly fortunate to have Carl and Susan as members and friends, and we are pleased to honor their commitment, competence, and devotion to square dancing.

Submitted by Sally Emmel

We just wanted to make sure you know about the RAF 62nd Dance-O-Rama to be held on Saturday, May 2, 2020.

It is the largest Square & Round Dance event held annually in the Rochester Area. Last year over 250 dancers attended.

DOR starts at 2pm and runs until 9:45pm on Saturday May 2, 2020.

We will have 3 rooms of dancing for our 4 square dance callers, 2 round dance cuers and line dance cuer.

We offer an onsite buffet dinner during the dinner hour. Tickets must be purchased by 4/1/2020

This year our caterer is Otto Tomotto and the dinner is $16 per person.

We can serve up to 125 people so get your dinner tickets early if you plan to eat on site.

RAF Club packets (with flyers, ribbons, dinner tickets, instructions, etc.) were sent to Club Presidents a few weeks ago.

For additional details such as dance and dinner flyers, dance schedules, etc., please check RAF website and Promenader at squaredancingrochester.org or the Square Dancing Rochester Facebook page.

DOR is a club-class friendly event. During our evening program we recognize the new 2020 graduates from all area clubs.

Make sure your graduates bring your club banner.

Special Note for Club Presidents & Treasurers:

Please note there are several important changes to the DOR packet you received this year.

Here are a few of them:

• A dance ribbon & dinner ticket list is provided to track your club sales. Please return it with your payment to the DOR Treasurer by the date required and address given in the packet.
• Volunteer schedule has been modified based on prior year club attendance.
• Volunteer list includes name and contact info. Please return it to DOR Treasurer with your ticket sales listing.
• Club Baskets for basket raffle need to be at Perinton Community Center by 1:30 pm day of DOR
• For easy reference, the DOR 2020 dance schedule is posted on the Square Dancing Rochester Facebook Page and in the Promenader as page 3 of the DOR Flyer.

If you have any questions or comments, please don’t hesitate to contact us at: raf_vp@squaredancingrochester.org

We hope to see you all at DOR 2020!

Debbie & Jeff Blood

DOR Co-Chairs and RAF Vice Presidents

Debbie & Jeff Blood #squaredance #socialexercise

2/10/2020

Many dancers, including me, miss the familiar yellow printed Promenader that showed up every few months in the mail. It was something you could pick up in your hand, put aside and then pick up again later. You could flip back and forth through the news and flyers, scan the schedules and mark the dances you wanted to attend. You could leave it lying around the house and browse it now and then.

Well, you can still do some of those things with the electronic version, and you can do many things that aren’t even possible in print—like selecting your favorite schedule format. But, for those who want to page through a hardcopy Promenader, Anne Granger, club reporter for the Silver Squares, may have found the answer.

She prints every page of the Promenader—flyers and all—and puts them in sleeves in a 3-ring binder. When a new issue comes out, she prints the new pages and substitutes them into the binder.

The first time is the most work, with more than 100 pages to print, but after that, it’s not so hard.

If your club has a member with time and a printer—or a few members to split up the effort and expense—then maybe this is a viable way to increase the access of your members to the Promenader’s wealth of information.

Many thanks to Anne Granger and the Silver Squares for this idea!

Submitted by Peter Emmel

Most dancers have taken part in at least one “demo” dance. You go to an unfamiliar venue and ‘put on a show’ for a group of people you don’t know and may never see again. Maybe you already dance every available evening, so there’s never a convenient time for you to join a demo square. If you are asked to organize a demo, you cringe at the thought of how many calls you will need to make to get enough dancers to be sure of even one square. There must be a better way.

Well, yes, there is. The RAF Promotions Committee, led by co-chairs Amy and Kris Aeckerle, has thought about this and worked out a better way. But before we get to that, let’s consider demo dances as explained by the committee at a recent RAF meeting.

Not all demonstration dances are the same. Some are for recruitment—showing the public who we are and how much fun dancing is. These “recruitment demos” are aimed at prospective new dancers, in hopes that some will join us and help grow our clubs. These dances are typically in public places like malls or at town events, hosted by organizations that are also interested in attracting active people.

Other demo requests come from organizations seeking interesting activities for their members to see or participate in. These “entertainment demos” are often held at nursing homes, were the audience appreciates the dancing and the music, and a few might join in if they are able.

For us, the dancers, there is a different motivation and reward for each of these two types of demo. For entertainment demos there is the reward of bringing music and smiles to folks who might not be able to go out and find them on their own. For recruitment demos, there is the satisfaction of doing our part to promote dancing by showing others what fun it is and encouraging them to join us.

Each of us hopefully has at least some level of willingness to put some amount of our time into one or both of these worthwhile efforts.

The idea that Kris and Amy and their team have developed is to ask dancers to express this by giving the committee their names and outlining their availability—in advance. That way, instead of making 200 calls to find the four couples available and willing for a given event, they can look on the sheet and zero in on those who are most likely to say yes for that day and time.

To implement this, they have sent around a request asking club leaders to gather names and availability for demos. If you haven’t seen such a list yet, then maybe you could help by taking the initiative to start one at your club.

Putting your name on the list isn’t a commitment to join a demo square, but it will give the organizer a fighting chance of being able to say yes to an organization requesting a demo.

Here is the information the list should collect:

• Dancer name, hometown & contact information (phone and email)
• Days & time blocks you might be available (e.g. Monday evenings)
• Indication of the distance you are willing to travel (maybe by season)
• Type(s) of demo you are willing to consider (entertainment, recruitment or both)

Lists should be given to Amy and Kris at a dance, or you can scan or photograph them and sent via email to RAFPromotions@gmail.com

Submitted by Peter Emmel, on behalf of the RAF Promotions Committee

In the Tip Sheet of the Fall 2019 issue of the Promenader, Peter Emmel discussed spatial awareness as it pertained to movement. Let’s add to it by introducing positioning. Not only do dancers need to know where they are and their relationship with other dancers, but they also should position themselves so they and others can better find themselves.

When turning a quarter, a half, or even three quarters, the move should be that amount, no more and no less. The nice thing about square dancing is that it happens in a square and is usually in rectangular rooms. We begin as heads or sides, facing a “Head” wall or a “Side” wall. So if we do a “Square Thru Four,” then we should end up looking at the side wall on your side. If another couple is waiting at the end of the call, then we would be in place for the next call. Both your couple and the other couple should have the spatial awareness of being in a “Facing Couple” position.

Even in the “Square Thru” movement itself should be done by pointing yourself from one wall to the next. Rounding the corners may give you and your dancing partners a slight disorientation. Even so, this would not terribly affect the completion of the call, but it certainly would help some new or weaker dancers if the focus is on wall-to-wall dancing. The more aware the dancer is, the more confident the dancer becomes.

When doing a “Hinge,” the dancer should only turn a quarter turn, and when doing a “Swing,” the dancer should only turn a half turn. Although, sometimes, the “Swing” ends up becoming a three quarter turn as in the “Spin the Top” or “Fan the Top.” In each of these cases, it is best not to over- or under-shoot the position. Being in the right place at the right time helps the dancer and any joining dancer to form into a position recognized by both dancers.

All of this is not to say that a square dance is like a march on a parade field. We are not doing a “Forward March” or an “About Face” squarely proceeding from one spot to another. It is about moving fluidly, blending with other dancers, while maintaining that spatial awareness. If a dancer is in position, then another dancer can then continue or regain his or her spatial awareness to be ready for the next call.

Submitted by dancer, Carl Webster