Greetings friends and fellow dancers.

Another great dance season is underway. Hopefully everyone is getting out and seeing old friends and acquaintances again. It’s good see that many of our clubs have new dancer classes with steady attendance. Obviously without these new dancers, the activity we all love will die out, so I encourage all of you to help out the classes in any way possible.

The Federation welcome back dance, the Fall Friendship Ball, went off very well. The little disappointment for me again this year was the small number of new graduate dancers in attendance. If anyone has any thoughts on this, I would sure like to hear them.

Belles ’N’ Beaus have decided to become a Mainstream club. Congratulations! This is the first in our area, at least during my dance time. The way Callerlab intended the dance programs to work is that Mainstream would be the main level of dancing—not Plus. That was intended to be a more advanced level. For anyone that would like to work on the Mainstream level of calls, and perhaps dance them from more than just the “vanilla” positions, I would encourage you to head out to Belles ’N’ Beaus on Monday nights.

The winter and holiday season is when we see a lot of clubs holding class / club dances. For new dancers, this is a great time to meet new people and dance to other great callers. As much as the busy holiday season allows, I encourage dancers new and experienced to get out and dance at other clubs for some good cheer and great dancing.

Enjoy the holidays and I’ll see you on the dance floor.

Jim Gotta