Lawrencetown Dancer Calls the Tunes

The 17th annual Canadian National Square and Round Dance Convention at Halifax’s World Trade and Convention Centre steps into gear and runs through Saturday, bringing together dancers from across North America, Europe and Japan.

They may not all be able to communicate directly, but they share "a common language," as Lawrencetown resident, and longtime Nova Scotia square dancer and square dance "caller", Dottie Welch puts it. And phrases like "scoot back," "spin the top" and "walk and dodge" could be part of the vocabulary.

Welch and her husband, Gary, have been scooting and spinning for decades.

They have only missed two of the last 16 national conventions, and Dottie has the "dangles" — square dance lingo for convention badges — to prove it.

The co-vice-chairwoman of this Halifax gathering also has numerous homemade square-dance blouses and skirts with tartans and Canadian wildflowers and even the Canadian flag.

And she is close to the top of her field, for dancing and calling.

She knows about 400 calls — the spoken or sung choreography for the dance — a high number that can only be followed by a few of the 600 or so regular square dancers in this province.

Clicking on her computer and plugging in her microphone, the 61-year-old aficionado demonstrates a few of her "singing calls," stepping away on the hardwood floor of her Lawrencetown home and crooning the lyrics.

She has songs by the Beatles, songs made famous by Johnny Cash, show tunes and anything that will work for the formations of eight dancers, who start as a square and sashay into various other "figures" — from simple to more complex moves like "chase the squirrel around the tree."

"Let’s see here," she says, scrolling down the playlist and choosing an instrumental of the Beatles’ From Me to You.

"If there’s anything that you want, if there’s anything I can do. One time around you go."

"La la la la la la la la. Swing your lady and then you promenade. Just call on me and I’ll send it along with love from me to you."

Welch calls these tunes for local clubs, weddings, anniversary parties and even business conventions. And she will be so busy calling at this convention — open to spectators for $5 a day — she won’t get to dance as much as she would like.

Her love of the non-competitive dance goes back to her childhood in Massachusetts. And it has carried her through some difficult times as an adult.

"I grew up in a squaring-dancing family," says the retired math teacher, who is also fascinated by the "geometry," or patterns, of the dance.

"My parents met square dancing, so this goes way back. I have wonderful memories as a child. . . . I grew up in New England and we’d go to a place up in New Hampshire to ski for the weekend, part of the Appalachian Mountain Club, and we’d ski all day and at night you would square dance.

"And they’d have a dance for maybe an hour for the kids . . . and then they’d take us and put us to bed. It was a big kind of dormitory building and they’d go back downstairs and they’d dance . . . you could hear the music."

Her parents, who danced regularly, played the records at home, too.

Back then, dancers favoured mostly fiddle tunes, although Welch remembers dancing once to an accordion. And back then, square dancers moved to far fewer calls, about 50.

As the hobby boomed in the 1950s and ’60s, people soon became bored with the limited repertory, so international groups added calls and accompanying levels of dance — Plus, Advanced and Challenge and on up.

When Welch and her husband moved to Nova Scotia in 1974, they started teaching themselves higher levels and formed a small group of similarly advanced dancers.

"It was obvious to me that the group needed to have a caller and it was also obvious if anybody was going to do it in the group, it was me because I was the one that could see the patterns and could sort them out. . . . So that’s what started me into calling" in 1983.

She has worked her way up to 400 calls, known as Challenge 2 or C2. There are only two higher levels.

And the hobby — dancing and calling — has come in handy when she needed it most.

"You have to focus on what you’re doing. You have to concentrate because . . . you have to listen, you have to comprehend, you have to tell your feet to do what your head’s just heard and you’ve got to do it in time to the music. So that requires you to just push aside everything else and for that time, be in that moment. And that is rejuvenating.

"I mean I went through some really hard times when my mom was living with us and she was slowly fading away and life was tough and I’d be ‘God can I muster the energy to go and call tonight?’ But once I picked up that microphone and put that music on, that would carry me."

This generation hasn’t cottoned to square dancing like the last. And as dancers grow older, their numbers are declining.

But Welch still sees a place for what has been such a big part of her life.

"Here we have, in one fairly inexpensive compact package, physical recreation, mental stimulation, social interaction, music — and music itself, there’s all kinds of studies saying doing things to music doubles the benefits.

"You put all those things into one compact package and it’s a pretty powerful recreation you’ve built, really. I mean it’s a lifetime hobby, truly. Here we are — how many years have we been doing this — and we’re still doing it, still interested by it and still enjoying it."

The convention also features square dancing offshoots like round dance, contra and clogging. And dancers will kick up their heels for free at Sackville Landing on the Halifax waterfront from 10 a.m. to noon Friday and Saturday, if it doesn’t rain.

For more information, go to squaredance.ns.ca and click on National Festival 2010.

By LOIS LEGGE Features Writer

The Halifax Chronicle Herald
Wed, July 28, 2010