The Story
Dancing against the Grain
"Its line dancing, but its not line dancing . . . and its certainly not square dancing," said former geology professor Steve Clement in an attempt to describe an unusual, old-fashioned dance called contra.
However difficult to explain, contra is growing in popularity with students at the College. The last on-campus contra dance, held Friday, Feb. 3, filled all three Chesapeake rooms and drew well over two hundred students.
"Its good clean fun," said Clement, who has played the banjo for the Friends of Appalachian Music, or FOAM, since the group was formed at the College in 1980. In the past few years, Clement has watched students interest in this fast-paced dance increase dramatically.
Contra is derived from English country dances of the type included at balls in the Governor's Palace before the American Revolution. Most students exposure to English country dance comes through period films such as the recent adaptations of the novels of Jane Austen.
Done at twice the speed, with twice the spinning and set to Appalachian tunes, these dances would most closely resemble contras. In such a dance, lines of couples perform a set of figures which include steps with names like right- or left-hand stars, the hay for four and the ladies' chain, and always end with the members of each pair facing one another. After dancing through the figures, each couple advances down the set and begins over again, thus dancing with each of the other partners in the room by turn.
Enthusiasts for this highly social dance have founded contra groups all over the country. Usually, a dance group rents a hall and hires a band and a caller for the evening. The Williamsburg group is somewhat unusual in that the band itself is often responsible for holding the dances.
Clement met the original members of FOAM in the late 1970s while learning to play the banjo. In 1980, the group became an official club, which allowed them to use the facilities on campus to practice.
Clement, who taught at the College from 1964 until 1996, became the group's faculty advisor. After a few years of playing together, the members of FOAM decided to hold a dance. More than twenty years later, they play every month in Norge and at any dances on campus. Although the full group is not present at every performance, the band is usually about ten strong.
"It's a virtual orchestra," Clement smiles, although he adds that only two of the current musicians are students, and both are seniors.
"We'll be very sorry to lose them," he said.
In an evening's dance, the band will usually play five contra dances, two waltzes and the Virginia Reel. Each song is fairly lengthy, usually running about seven minutes. The caller, who explains the sequence of figures before each dance, begins with a simple set of moves and adds more complex figures as the dances progress.
Few of these dances actually require a specific tune, although a few songs are more suited to some figures over others. In different areas of the country, the tunes are predominantly Irish or French Canadian, with occasional jigs or reels.
No matter the type of music, however, there is always a live band, and at the last campus dance, a musician would occasionally switch out and join a dance or two.
It was just too much fun to resist.