President’s Corner September 1, 2022

The past few months have been exciting with several dances, demos, promotional activities etc. A few more clubs returned to the dance floor. Batavia Silver Stars, Village Squares and Pairs N Squares. The Federation sponsored three summer fun dances on Saturday afternoons. It has been fun to stay in touch during the summer with our dancing family.

Currently many clubs and even the Federation are operating without all their leadership positions filled.

There is so much behind the scenes planning that goes into everything we do, whether it is a dance, ice cream social, pie night, picnics, DOR Dances, etc. Because we want to continue to offer the fantastic dancing programs as we have done in prior years, we need more help from our dancing members. This is at both the Federation and club level. If you are available and want to help out, please let your club leadership or Federation leadership know. As the tasks are being more spread out to others, it is easier on everyone. Any way you can offer to help will be appreciated, whether it is helping with making calls on a club phone tree, printing dance flyers, cutting coupons for the troops, submitting articles to the Promenader, helping proof reading the Promenader, arriving early or staying late to help set up or clean up after dances, we really need you.

Currently all our member clubs are planning to offer dance programs in September. Several clubs are holding open houses and offering square dance classes. Please continue to check the Promenader and our Facebook page, Square Dancing Rochester, for the current dance schedules.

The Federation’s Promotions Task Force has been very busy. The square dance demo at the Greece Historical Society’s annual fund raiser in June was well attended by our dancers, we had 35 dancers participating. The Historical Society announced that over 500 people attended that event. Thanks again to Mike Callahan for calling the demo for us.

Community and library displays are keeping us busy. Diane Cundra organized the Webster library display back in April. She actively contacted many other libraries and we plan to create similar displays at the Henrietta, Penfield and Pittsford libraries this Fall. Starting Sept 1st, The Greece Historical Society is providing us an entire room at their center on Long Pond Rd to display Square Dance attire and information on Square Dancing. The timing is perfect, just before our clubs start their Open Houses and Fall classes. Anne Granger, Don Naulin along with Jeff and Debbie Blood are coordinating this display at the Greece Historical Society.

The “55 Plus” magazine focuses on the following qualities—healthy activity, mentally challenging, physically active and socially interactive. Our dancing matched their criteria perfectly. In addition to interviewing us in July, their reporter attended the Federations Barnard Dance & Dinner on July 16 to interview dancers and take photos. We are looking forward to seeing their Sept/Oct issue featuring an article on square & round dance. This timing should be a perfect promotion for our Fall classes start up. Mike Callahan is preparing a square dance article for the “Westside News” that we plan to share with several other area publications. We also are in process of setting up a few radio & TV interviews as well.

Special thanks to the 2022 Promotions Task Force members for all their efforts promoting square and round dancing:

Ronni Camiolo, Mike Callahan, Peter Emmel, Dave Eno, Gil Porter, Donna & Rick LaDonna and Debbie & Jeff Blood

Our new lawn signs are in and were distributed at the July 16th dance at Barnard. Anyone wanting to add QR codes to any of their existing signs, just contact Jeff Blood. He has printed and laminated several QR codes to fit the previous Learn to Square Dance signs.

Our first Federation Meeting for 2022–23 is on Wednesday, September 21, and will be a Zoom session. The DOR meeting is scheduled at 6:30 p.m. and Federation Meeting will follow at approximately 7:30 p.m. Anyone interested in being on the DOR committee in any other capacity, please let us know.

We are looking forward to seeing you on the dance floor.

Take Care,

Debbie & Jeff Blood

Debbie & Jeff Blood