Editor’s Page

Welcome to the Promenader for Fall, 2015. After a summer off, or of dancing in air conditioned halls, perhaps in far away places, it’s time to reunite with our Rochester area friends and kick off a new dancing season.

New Dance Season

It’s also time to welcome last season’s graduates and help them assimilate into our clubs, and time to meet a fresh group of prospective new dancers at club Open House events and beginner classes.

This month we highlight club Open House events by listing them on the main home page - below the navigation buttons. It might be below the edge of your screen when you get to the home page, so if you didn’t notice it, you can click HERE to see it.

Speaking of Classes

We plan to put class listings in a prominent place as well, but this will take another week or two to get organized. Class listings will most likely be incorporated by expanding the “Class/Club” section. We’ll send around an announcement when this happens.

Speaking of Angels

One of the most important things that established dancers can do to support and encourage new dancers is to serve as angels during classes and workshop tips. The September issue of American Squaredance magazine carries an excellent article on how to be a good angel. Every established dancer should read this, so we have reproduced it in the photos and features section of this issue of the Promenader.

Promenader Dance

Please don’t forget to put the Promenader Dance on your calendar (September 26) and talk it up around your club. For a look at the flyer, to see our great line-up of callers and cuers, click HERE. Used square dance fashions will no longer be available at the dance. Unsold fashions from prior years have been donated to the Salvation Army Thrift Store, where they are available for purchase. (3790 West Ridge Road, Rochester, NY 14626—just west of Sam’s Club). New donations will be accepted by Jane Avery at the dance.

All proceeds this year will go toward reimbursing clubs for costs associated with recruitment of new dancers.

Come dance with your friends and help us recognize the efforts of our Promenader volunteers, knowing that the proceeds will help support new dancer recruitment.

Promenader History

With help from Betty and Andy Ludwick, Dick Halstead has accumulated the full set of printed Promenaders, beginning with an “open letter” appeal for support, dated September 18, 1962. Issue number one is presented in full in the first of two articles Dick has submitted this month. (The articles are HERE.) Dick plans to pull historical tidbits from this archive to begin “populating” the History pages of the Federation website. He would appreciate help from a few volunteers, who can contact him at dickhalstead@gmail.com … or find him on the dance floor.

New Website Host

For various reasons we are moving the RAF-Promenader website to a new hosting service. This will have no effect on what you see or how you access the site, but it will hopefully clear up the intermittent problems that some of you have been reporting over the summer. The move will be made during the first week of September and, hopefully … nobody will notice.

Peter Emmel—Interim Editor