Where did our summer go? It seems it went by so fast this year!

We are not complaining, it has been a fun summer with so many dances and events to be with our friends.

We hope everyone enjoyed many of the summer fun dancing opportunities that were available. It was great to see so many of our recent graduates joining us on the dance floor and at our demos and picnic events.

We thank everyone who has participated in the square dance demos this summer. It is a fun way to share our joy of square dancing. Hopefully, we will encourage people to try Square Dancing this Fall when the classes begin in September and October.

We started our summer demos with the Annual Strawberry & Dessert Tasting Festival Fund Raiser for the Greece Historical Society on June 19th. Our clubs provided four squares of dancers for the demo. Mike Callahan did a wonderful job calling and getting participants to join us on the dance floor. Mike also did a great job encouraging the 500+ in attendance to try square dancing during our demos and to consider attending our classes this Fall.

Another demo was held at Grace Covenant Church in Chili on July 15th. Jim Gotta did a great job calling. Several participants indicated they enjoyed the square dancing so much that they would be coming back to our classes in the Fall or plan to check into square dancing in their own areas.

At this time, we have two square dance info tables planned, one in August at Josh Jensen’s Health Fair on Saturday, August 26, and one at the Sweden Historical Society’s event on Saturday, September 23. At this point we are not sure if we will need dancers to demonstrate square dancing. If we do need dancers, we will announce it at the summer square dances. We welcome any volunteers to help with the info table. We have been making videos of our dances, so we plan to set up a laptop at these info tables so live square dancing can be seen.

In August, we set up a Square Dance display at the Parma Library located on the main street of Hilton. The display is in the front window of the library and is estimated to be about 20 feet long. It will be a great way to advertise square dancing and the start up of classes in September. A big thank you to Laurie Cordaro, Cloverleafs Squares, for arranging this for us.

Anne Granger, WNYF Vice President, has done a fantastic job trying to set up a vendor for ordering Square Dance Polos for our dancers. It has been a several-month project and working with 4–5 companies before finding our new vendor.

Like with many other small businesses, both the companies we had used in the past are no longer in operation. Anne has found a local company that will provide us polo shirts, at a good price, with a selection of colors and with or without our club logos on the front and with or without the “Dance in a Square, Make a Circle of Friends” logo on the back. Please refer to the information article on this in the Fall Promenader. If you have any questions, you can contact Anne directly at 585-317-6442.

A little background on us, we returned to square dancing in 2016 after taking 20 years off for our family and careers. We became involved with the Federation Leadership in 2019 and have never regretted it. We have met many wonderful people and made so many friends. Volunteering to help with your club or the Federation is a fun way to get to know your fellow dancers and find out how truly wonderful they are.

The Federation is always looking for volunteers to help with our committees:

The Promotions Task Force: Critical in promoting square and round dancing, arranging demos, writing articles, etc.

DOR Committee: Plans, contracts, organizes, and runs our Annual May Dance-o-Rama Dance & Basket Raffle.

The WNYF maintains an informative website (squaredancingrochester.org) that carries dance schedules and contact information. Embedded in our website is the Promenader, our quarterly publication of news and events for our 16 member clubs. We also maintain a Facebook page (Square Dancing Rochester) with photos of recent events and announcements of upcoming ones.

There is much behind the scenes work done outside of meetings, making flyers for upcoming events, contacting people, writing articles, helping with square dance demos, square dance displays, special events, etc. We hope you will join us in some of these activities. To join our teams of very dedicated dancers, please don’t hesitate to reach out to us at dfbjvbhome@aol.com

We are so proud to be part of this Square Dance Community. Not only does this community know how to have fun together, it also really cares about its members—celebrating the good times and supporting in the difficult times.

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

Take Care,

Debbie & Jeff

+++++

DOR 2023 Committee

They are a wonderful team:

Linda English Lorraine & Gary Granath Anne Granger & Don Naulin

Donna & Rick LaDonna Sharon & Chuck Meyer Mary Jo Webster

WNYF: Currently has 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.

Debbie & Jeff Blood