President’s Corner 3/1/23

The Holiday Season brought wonderful dancing opportunities across our region. The WNYF & Copy Cats second annual New Year’s Eve Afternoon Dance was a fun time to welcome the new year with our square dance friends and family. We had five squares of dancers and seven couples round dancing to Jim Gotta’s calling and cueing.

We hope everyone is enjoying 2023 so far.

We currently have 16 clubs in the Federation: Batavia Silver Stars, Boo Bull Squares and Rounds, Cayuga Cut-Ups, Cloverleaf Squares, Copy Cats, Dalton Gang, Fun Bunch, Grand Squares, Pairs N Squares, Penn Yan Friendship Squares, Shirts N Skirts (Fulton), Shamrock Squares, Silver Squares, Southern Tier Wheelers, Village Squares and Waterwheel Squares. It’s been fantastic to see our clubs back dancing. We hope you take the opportunity to dance with our member clubs.

Our dance floors are getting fuller as we enjoy all the upcoming celebrations such as the Winter Wonderland Dances, Hawaiian Dances, Mari Gras Dances, Valentine’s Day Dances, St Patrick’s Day Dances, etc. For details, please see the Promenader’s Club News and Dance Schedule pages.

Please save the date for the Federation’s Dance-O-Rama 2023 on Saturday, May 6, 2023. It is our sixty-third DOR. This currently is the largest square and round dance in Western NY. DOR 2023 will be at the Perinton Rec Center, 1350 Turk Hill Rd, Fairport NY. Ribbons purchased before 4/29/23 are $10 each. Ribbons purchased on or after 4/29/23 are $12.

DOR 2023 will feature international caller and cuer Betsy & Roy Gotta and Western NY & Canadian Caller, Dave Eno. The event runs from 1:00–5:30 pm. Dancing levels include Mainstream, Plus, A2 and Round Dancing. We are happy to announce this year’s DOR program will include recognition of our 2023 graduates, our first graduates since COVID. We know from our recent club/class dances that the classes are doing very well learning the mainstream program. We are looking forward to their graduation. The Daphne-Norma Leadership Award will be presented which is the highest award given in our square & round dancing community. The recipients are recognized for their demonstrated leadership furthering the cause of square and round dancing for an extended period of time. The DOR 2023 Committee will be creating a Federation Wall of Recognition honoring all of our current active WNYF callers and cuers. To accomplish this wall, the committee is requesting each caller and cuer provide a photo and brief bio from questions provided by the DOR 2023 committee. This year we are again asking each of our WNYF clubs to donate a basket for the basket raffle as was traditionally done in prior years. The basket raffle is one of the highlights of DOR. Each club is asked to include 2 free dance tickets to one of their regular dances in their donated basket. The DOR 2023 Ribbons were ordered and will be distributed to the WNYF Club Presidents by the end of February or beginning of March.

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

Take Care,

Debbie & Jeff Blood