Old-Time Music and Dance: Community and Folk Revival

29. Collection Time!

— 267 — 29 COLLECTION TIME! This book was undertaken from a particular historical perspective. It was 1987 when I first drafted this narrative and printed it in the Sugar Hill calendar. Most of the issues and people discussed here had their influence before this date; most who came after are omitted. I have followed some thematic threads past that date when it seemed helpful. This chapter describes a typical dance at the time I began the narrative. To give readers a foundation for the issues discussed in the book, this chapter ought to have come sooner. But I felt that it could not precede its own formative influences, and have left it until now. In keeping with the overall approach here, the focus is on the holistic organizational effort—the articulation of community—and not merely on the music and dance per se. As was the case with so many dance communities in the mid-1980s, habit, tradition, and some vague will to carry on guided so many of the logistical necessities for the Bloomington dance group. To a visitor, a dance would have appeared to operate almost by intuition, with no predetermined structure. Personnel would shift routinely in and out of habitual roles. Some aspects of this logistical practice were unique to Bloomington. In fact, whereas dancing itself became increasingly stan- — 268 — Old-Time Music and Dance dardized across groups nationwide, community organization was notably localized. In relocating to a new group, adjusting to the dancing itself was not that difficult. But if a dancer brought too many structural expectations along, finding a comfortable niche in the organization could be more difficult. Generally, infrastructural differences had much to do with the way particular dance groups were founded and who founded them: Bloomington ’s counterculture roots became less common as new groups arose from circumstances contemporary to the 1980s. The best way to understand this is to examine what it might have taken to bring together a typical Wednesday Night Dance. For appearance, I have organized the discussion into sections, but this is not to suggest that the dance itself was so strictly partitioned. Setting Up. The dance officially began each Wednesday night at 7:30, and at about this time the sound system arrived and the door was unlocked . For many years, the sound system was stored at Ted Hall’s house, so each week he brought it to the dance in his car along with the key to unlock the door. Most likely the few who arrived at 7:30 would help set up the equipment. At the time, operating the sound system was not considered a specialized role—anyone was allowed and even encouraged to learn its basic operation and adjust the settings when necessary. The equipment itself, one might soon learn, was public property. Later, concerns were raised that there were too many people adjusting the sound, but in the beginning no one wanted to create a bureaucracy over something that could be managed much more simply. If there were serious problems with the equipment, they were usually passed on to Jim Johnson, Roger Diggle, Gary Stanton, or Ted Hall. In winter, the dance was held in the gymnasium of Harmony School, an alternative school where some dancers worked or had children who attended; in summer, it was held in an open-air shelter at Upper Cascades , a city park. Many Bloomington dancers missed the old hall, the Old Library, from which they recently moved, citing its “warmth.” The acoustics were noticeably poorer in the new building. Poor acoustics, uncomfortable temperature and humidity, poles that supported the roof (and got in the way of dancers), poor relations with proprietors or — 269 — Collection Time! neighbors, and poor flooring could each spoil the effectiveness of a hall. Yet poor conditions were never entirely debilitating: on a given night, determined dancers could overcome even the most daunting obstacles to achieve good dancing. In such cases, setting up meant transforming a physical space into a properly prepared ritual space. Transporting the sound system week after week could be a demanding job. Yet, because the dance emerged as an informal social event, volunteers were not paid for this or for any other work. Even in dance communities where callers and bands were paid, sound operators most often were not paid unless they owned the system. But like dancing itself, and like so many other work...