Saratoga News

Photograph by Skye Dunlap

Saratogans David Cornelius and Kathy Moore gaze into each other's eyes while English country dancing.

Shall We Dance?

Saratogans join in a pastime popular in Jane Austen's England

By Sandy Sims

On any night of the week people are doing it, and most of us don't have a clue that it's going on. Saratogan David Cornelius and his wife Kathy Moore often do it on the floor of the Masonic Temple in Palo Alto, and Joan Goodill's boy Eric, whom she raised in Saratoga, does it with his wife on the floor of the First Christian Church of San Jose.

Many of us saw Kate Winslett and Emma Thompson do it in the movie Sense and Sensibility and wanted to do it ourselves, but we figured people didn't do that kind of thing anymore.

But people do. They slip quietly away from their daytime personas as teachers, professors, lawyers, carpet layers, book binders, computer specialists, engineers, plumbers, librarians, chiropractors, tech writers and nurses, and they transform into refined, graceful English country dancers. And for all the people doing it, you'd think the rest of us would know about it.

Actually, anyone can do it. If you can walk and you know left from right, you can attend one of the English country dance (ECD) classes/dances in the Bay Area.

Each dance is prompted by a caller (similar to a square-dance caller) who gives a run-through of the dance before the music begins. Beginners are always welcome, and the risk to a person's social sensitivity is minimal. That is because the object is not the personality or the talk; it's the dance.

"It's addicting," says one 30-something man. "Yes, it is," says a small retired woman who dances wherever she can.

She has lots of choices, because The Bay Area Country Dancing Society (BACDS)--affiliated with the national organization Country Dance and Song Society (CDSS)--sponsors groups in Berkeley, San Francisco, Fairfax, Davis, El Cerrito, Palo Alto, San Jose and Santa Cruz.

Palo Alto holds ECD classes/dances on the first and third Friday of each month and in San Jose on the first and third Wednesday. The San Jose group closes down during the summer, but the Palo Alto group continues year-round.

It's the first Wednesday of this month when Cornelius, a software engineer for NCD and Moore, a sales and management consultant for small manufacturers, leave behind their work, their lovely home in the hills of Saratoga, their sweet, shaggy old dog, their Siamese cat, Moore's horse and her son, Saratoga High School senior Nicolas. They head for the First Christian Church on Fifth Street in San Jose.

There a pianist, a fiddler and a clarinet player dressed in funky clothes settle in to play the lilting melodies that go with 17th- and 18th-century English country dances. Jody McGeen, a schoolteacher (and young Eric Goodill's wife) is the caller for the Wednesday night group. She introduces Alan Winston, who will call some of the dances.

The unlikely group of about 16 characters assemble into partners on the wooden floor of the fellowship hall. (Last year this room was used as a homeless shelter.) They are wearing casual clothes. Several of the women are wearing long skirts. There are two newcomers; one is the reporter for the Saratoga News.

McGeen coaches the group through the first dance, explaining the different figures (steps). The musicians begin a sweet melody, and the couples move through the figures easily. Only it doesn't go so smoothly for the reporter.

It's like learning a new language, hard to remember the individual figures and then put them together in order.

However, there is something distinct here, something kind and forgiving and friendly in the atmosphere. When the newcomer loses her way, the others guide her, point her in the right direction, take her hand and pull her 'round.

Watching the repeated patterns of an ECD is enchanting--the dancers weaving in and out of each other, skipping, twirling skirts, sliding, walking and all in a pattern that moves up and down the line, a of kaleidoscope of constant motion.

After newcomers have several dances under their belts and know the figures, they can add a little of the finesse of the dance, the nice little skipping steps, turning around with grace and giving weight (leaning out a little so your partner can respond to your pull). And they learn to gaze into their partner's eyes. Yes, gaze into a stranger's eyes.

"This is a flirtatious dance," McGeen explains. "You can fall in love with a partner during one dance and do it again with another partner in another dance then go home and forget it all," McGeen says, laughing. Some say that this gazing keeps the dancers from getting dizzy when they go 'round and 'round.

"There is a good mix of married and single people," McGeen says. However, they all switch partners throughout the evening. "Now thank your partner for this dance," McGeen reminds at the end of each dance. The partners separate, and with just a nod or an outstretched hand, they have a new partner. No wallflowers here.

Though people have been known to pair up from time to time and even marry someone they meet on the dance floor, it's not that kind of pickup scene found in bars. Dancers could conceivably dance for months, crossing paths with various partners and never learning their names.

Or they could accept the invitation announced at the end of the Friday night class and join others for coffee at Palo Alto's Peninsula Creamery.

For all this freedom from social obligation, there is actually an unspoken bond between longtime dancers. They can travel anywhere in the United States and beyond and achieve instant friendship. McGeen and Goodill arrived in Anchorage not too long ago without a place to stay. They looked in their CDSS members' directory and found the names of Anchorage members. They telephoned, and the couple said, "Come stay with us."

"We did, and we went dancing that same night," Goodill recalls.

Because many of the same dances are taught worldwide, one could likely go to any city in the world where there is ECD and join right in without knowing the language.

"It all started with Louis the XIV at Versailles," McGeen explains. Everyone who was in Louis' court was required to know Baroque dancing. Out of this dance form came ballet and the figures and dances of ECD. Baroque dancing was the dance of the court. ECD became the dance of the gentry in England, and it was popular then to learn the latest figures from France. Eventually, ECD became a dance for the masses.

McGeen was introduced to ECD about 20 years ago in New York. "I'm a musician, and I fell in love with the music," she says. "Each dance has its own music, so it all works together," she explains. "I felt like I'd come home."

For those dancers who want to go all out and capture the feel of the period when ECD was for the gentry, there are the annual Playford balls all around the globe. The Bay Area ball--where dancers dress formally, some adorned in period costumes--is held at Oakland's Scottish Rite Temple in the spring.

Those attending the ball know the dances ahead of time because they are announced and taught at the weekly classes for months beforehand. The names of ECDs are charming and hint at a story: "A Soldier's Life," "The Beggar Boy," or "An Old Man is a Bed Full of Bones."

BACDS also sells observer's tickets to this gala event, so people can gaze down from the gallery at the beautiful dance patterns below.

English country dancing is not the only dancing Cornelius and Moore do. Sometimes they head out for contra dancing (nothing to do with Oliver North), which is a blend of ECD and square dancing. According to James Hutson's article, "A Capsule Chronicle of Contradancing, Part One," from the Contra Corners newsletter, the name "contra dance" has mutated from the French "contredanse" (translates to "opposites dance") which was a mutation of the English term "country dance."

No matter what the name, the floor rocks at Palo Alto's YWCA, with a fiddler and a pianist and other strings playing what sounds like a jig or a reel, and at the very least 30 couples contra dancing. "You really work up a sweat," Cornelius says.

There's more spinning and bouncing and kicking up the heels, and more body contact. The dance is faster, not the genteel, reserved moves of ECD. It's also more popular. Some song names reflect an earthier, more flamboyant dance with titles like "Men in Chains," "Pigtown Petronella," "Road Kill," and "Flying Flamingos."

Carol Wilson, an English instructor at Mission College, says, "You giggle a little more at contra dancing when you mess up. ECD is a little more reserved, but both are really fun." Wilson goes regularly to both.

But there's more--family camps, where families and singles country dance for an entire week. They do it at Monte Toyon camp in Aptos, at Lark in the Morning camp in Mendocino and at Sierra Swings camp near Kings Canyon National Park. The most famous camp is Pinewood, close to Cape Cod, where Cornelius grew up.

Cornelius' parents have been English country dancing for 60 years and are very active at Pinewood. He watched them dance until he was 7 years old and finally joined in. He danced until he grew up and left home, and then didn't dance again for 25 years. Cornelius is in his early 40s now. When Moore asked him one day in 1995 if there was something he'd really love to do, his dancing feet itched, and off they went to Pinewood family camp to surprise his parents. This was Moore's first encounter with this form of dance. Cornelius and Moore have returned every summer since. During the rest of the year, at least once a month, if Cornelius isn't playing ice hockey and Moore isn't riding her horse, they wind down their Saratoga hill and zoom off to Palo Alto or San Jose to dance.

English country dancers do their thing anywhere they can. On May Day of this year, they danced at sunrise at the Santa Cruz lighthouse, later that day at the Homeless Garden and the Pacific Garden Mall and at Bookshop Santa Cruz. In late June they will be weaving and twirling around Monterey. They do it at Hyde Park in Davis, on the green in Ashland and at the Renaissance Pleasure Fair.

For more information about ECD or contra dancing call the BACDS hotlines: 650/65-9169 for the South Bay and 415/282-7374 for San Francisco. Their Web site is www.well.com/user/cwj/bacds.

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