Hi Everyone!

So much has happened in our dancing community the past few weeks, it is positive news that several of our clubs are starting up with “members only” dances in May. We have so many dancers wanting to return to in-person dancing.

Returning to dancing safely is a prime concern. Our clubs along with the Federation plan to follow the local safety protocols at our dances. Currently they will include wearing masks, using hand sanitizer between tips, providing bottled water, no food or snacks, etc. From some initial polling of dancers, our dance community vaccine rate (vaccinated or in process) exceeds 80%, one of our clubs reported 95%.

Another concern of many dancers is how much will they remember, for most it has been more than a year since they danced. In a recent meeting, several callers indicated it is their job to call to the level of the floor. The callers unanimously assured us that our returning dancers should not to worry, also they anticipated our dancers would be pleasantly surprised how well they will do upon returning to the dance floor.

All the Federation sponsored dances have been booked in open-air facilities. We have 3 Free Fun Dances scheduled on Saturday afternoons in pavilions—two in June (5th & 19th) and one in July (17th). The August DORish Dance on August 21st is in an open-air facility at Barnard Restaurant & Party House. The open-air facility is large enough for a 250–500 sit down reception so it has plenty of room for our dancers.

Please save the date for our DORish Dance scheduled for Saturday August 21. It will be quite the event, planning a full afternoon of dancing with most of our local callers & cuers. With enough participation, we can provide an on-site buffet dinner (need at least 50 people). Dinner menu and price along with the Dance program and fee will be shared as soon as they are available. An after-dinner highlight being planned is a “pass the mic” dancing session featuring all the callers. At the national dance conventions, “pass the mic” is one of the most memorable dancing sessions, it is so much fun to see all the callers having fun calling together.

On the Virtual Dance front, several callers/cuers have offered to continue the Zoom sessions in May for any interested dancers without compensation. The Virtual Dance Zoom Sessions have been scheduled for Saturday May 8th and Friday May 21st. They will start at 6:30pm and continue to about 9pm. We have a full lineup of dancing options:

Rounds 6:30 to 7 pm.

Mainstream/Announce Plus 7–8 pm

Advanced/Challenge 8–9 pm

Everyone is welcome to dance or watch.

We want to thank all the callers and cuers along with others who assisted with all the work effort to start up virtual dances last November & December. Also thank you to everyone involved with providing Federation sponsored virtual square and round dancing to our members from December to April. Virtual Dancing is challenging both for the callers and dancers. There was a lot of behind-the-scenes efforts and coordination to make Virtual Dancing on Zoom available to our dancers. We appreciated everyone’s efforts in trying to keep square & round dancing alive during the pandemic. We realize nothing replaces the fun and social aspect of dancing together in-person with our dance family. Fortunately, we had Zoom sessions as a way for our dance family to meet and dance together safely over the past 12+ months.

Regretfully we have some dancers that will not be returning to the dance floor with us.

We will miss them and reflect on our good memories of fun times we enjoyed together.

Please Take Care & We hope to see you in a square in the near future!

Debbie & Jeff Blood