Old-Time Music and Dance: Community and Folk Revival

16. Dance Camps

— 152 — 16 DANCE CAMPS During the latter years of the 1970s, particularly on the East Coast, where populated cities are in close proximity, there was beginning to emerge a cosmopolitan network of contra dance groups. This was partly constituted in local dances, but also in large annual dance events to which the most avid dancers, musicians, and callers frequently traveled. Because of its geographic distance from these events and its independent origins, Bloomington and other same-generation Midwest dances were isolated from this emerging network. By the end of the decade, however, cultural commerce with the distant movement had become established. As a pivotal event, some point to a particular 1975 trip to Pinewoods that included Dillon Bustin, Frank Hall, Ted Hall, and Laura Ley. Pinewoods is a camp near Plymouth, Massachusetts, operated in the summer by the Country Dance and Song Society (CDSS), which holds week-long schools there in folksong and dance. Although such “dance weeks” or “dance camps” became widespread later during the 1980s, they were few in number before then. For most of the 1970s, Pinewoods , the Berea Christmas Country Dance School (Berea, Kentucky), and the John C. Campbell Folk School (Brasstown, North Carolina) — 153 — Dance Camps were the main outlets for disseminating revived traditions associated with English and American folk dance. The spectrum of traditions they taught and helped canonize was taken largely from English folksong collector Cecil Sharp’s range of interests and from the curriculum of the English Folk Dance and Song Society—in fact, EFDSS emissaries played a part in founding these American institutions. Ironically, it was EFDSS director Douglas Kennedy who urged the American branch to “loosen their focus and to acknowledge their service to the American as well as English tradition more, and to become independent of EFDS” (Wilfert 1989: 18; English Folk Dance Society was the original name). Renamed the Country Dance Society (and later the Country Dance and Song Society), the newly independent organization began incorporating American material into the curriculum, inviting teachers from the Pine Mountain Settlement School (Kentucky), Berea College, and the Campbell Folk School. It is important to note that neither Pinewoods nor CDSS had any significant formative influence on the Bloomington dance group—as they did on so many other groups. Indeed, the stark absence of pre1970s dance communities suggests the limited influence, despite promotional efforts lasting much of the twentieth century, of cultural organizations such as CDSS. In Bloomington, even Dillon Bustin’s efforts at national affiliation were held in check by local opposition. Locally, it seems, the independent origin and character of the group were already well established on other terms. But dance camps would come to be seen as an increasingly valuable resource for and influence on Bloomington in all but organizational matters. The first contact with Bloomington was in 1973, when Dillon and David Molk attended Pinewoods and provided encouragement for the 1975 trip. This latter group was larger, and its participants were then at the center of dance group social experience. Laura, then in her prime as a caller, recalls bringing back a number of new dances. But the most significant influence was the series of subsequent trips during this crucial period of the dance. The next year, in 1976, Mark Feddersen, Frank Hall, Ted Hall, and Teri Klassen attended the Berea Christmas School. I was there also, but I had only recently arrived in Bloomington. In 1977 Laura Ley, Martha Marmouzé, Frank Hall, and Ted Hall were — 154 — Old-Time Music and Dance back at Pinewoods. In the summer of 1978 Toby Bonwit, Ted Hall, Teri Klassen, and Stan Sitko went to Brasstown. In the 1980s many from the group served on the performer staffs of various camps; Frank Hall was coordinator of the 1986 Pinewoods American Week. The week-long summer camp format for country-dance instruction was introduced very early at Pinewoods, dating at least to 1913 and to the earliest programs by Cecil Sharp and others. The first summer session was held in Chocorua, New Hampshire, at the camp of Harvard dramatics professor George P. Baker, and featured English country, morris, and sword dancing taught by A. Claude Wright. Later camps used facilities normally devoted to summer theater, scouting, and agriculture . In 1933, country-dancers took over the scout campground owned by dancer Lily Conant near Plymouth, Massachusetts, and there began the run of summer programs...