No Squares Allowed Here : Contra Dancing to Old-Fashioned ‘Stompy Music’ Makes Many Feet Happy

A handsome, middle-aged couple are sitting in a meeting hall, pontificating enthusiastically about contras.

But no mention is made of Nicaragua or the Sandinistas. These two are speaking of contras of a different kind--contra dances that take place the third Saturday of every month at the Anaheim Cultural Arts Center.

“This is my first time. My husband dragged me here,” said Irvine resident Marcella Lowe with a grin. Warren Lowe, 60, a Customs Service inspector, made his contra debut the previous month and sounded as if he was on his way to becoming a contra convert.

“I used to dance the Virginia reel to this sort of music back in Massachusetts,” he said, gesturing toward the stage, where a band was playing a furious fiddle tune. “It’s easy to pick up on these dances after you do them a few times.”

She seemed eager to hit the dance floor: “This music has a different beat from square-dancing music. We used to call this ‘stompy music’--the stuff you like to pat your feet to.”

Contra dancing, according to Richard Nevell’s book “A Time to Dance,” is a distant cousin of Morris dancing, an ancient ceremonial activity performed by men in England to encourage fruitful crops. As the dance evolved, it became more of a social function involving both sexes.

Early settlers of New England brought the dances with them to this continent. By the late 18th Century, the French, a dominant force in dance at the time, renamed this “country dancing” contredanse , which English-speakers later adapted to “contra.”

The term also refers to the position of dancing opposite a partner. Instead of dancers interacting in groups of eight, as is common in square dancing, contra dancers line people up in two long rows.

Carolyn Russell is the main organizer of these Anaheim dances. Long before any happy-footed folk show up to test the floor, Russell stands in the middle of the small hall, checking the sound system for the Occasional String Band quintet, in which she plays guitar, bass and, sometimes, French accordion. The 56-year-old Garden Grove resident cuts a casual figure in wheat-colored slacks, black blouse and Birkenstock sandals as she shouts directions over the music to adjust the level of various instruments and microphones. Once satisfied with the sonic levels, Russell took a break in a quiet back room and talked about exactly what makes these dances worth the effort it takes to set them up and keep them running.

“I was born on a farm in North Dakota and was raised around old-time music. As a 5-year-old, I was taken to some of the last authentic country dances in the area,” she explained, speaking softly now that she didn’t have to shout over amplified music.

“Those dances were held in school auditoriums, with benches all around the sides and lots of coats and overshoes and grandmas and little kids. A fiddler came down from Canada, usually.”

Russell’s fascination with music began at a tender age. She got a ukulele when she was 6, a guitar for Christmas when she was 10 and picked up other instruments from there. Now, she is such a music aficionado that she also plays guitar in the Louisiana Cajun Trio and a zydeco band.

She has been plucking tunes with Occasional String Band-mates Carty Wilson and Hugh Nestor since the late ‘70s.

“We had been gathering to play music in living rooms forever, it seemed,” Russell said. “Out of that group of people playing together, the idea of having dancing developed. My husband and I had a covered, sheltered patio in our yard in Garden Grove, and put on a dance there for five years, until 1987.”

That’s when city officials put a halt to the informal gatherings because Russell did not have an entertainment permit.

Once the band decided that the dancers and the musicians deserved “to build a good dance, as opposed to a fun thing that ultimately wouldn’t go anywhere,” Russell said, they moved the contra first to Huntington Beach, then in late 1988 to its current location. A labor of love more than a moneymaking venture, this monthly contra draws 30 to 50 dancers per night--just enough, at $4 per adult admission, to cover rental fees for the hall.

(Seven monthly contra dances in the Los Angeles-Orange County area are listed in the California Dance Co-Operative bulletin, which promises “No partner or experience necessary. All dances taught and prompted.”)

The live music, Russell said, is a vital ingredient of contra dances.

“This music has a way of reminding us of people we love,” she said. “My grandfather and great uncles played various instruments at local dances in North Dakota and in a small-town band that was something straight out of ‘The Music Man.’ Maybe this music gives us those people and those times back, when people were more of a community, dependent upon each other in real ways. You’ll find strangers talking to each other at this dance and that sense of community.”

Music that emanates from a live band instead of a record player also sets contra dancing apart from square-dancing, Russell added.

“There’s very little square-dancing that I know of, at least in Southern California, that’s done to live music. I think square-dancers are more into developing precision moves and good-looking things out on the dance floor. Maybe there are people who get more pleasure out of precision. But this music is more loose and forgiving.”

By the time Russell rejoins the band on stage, most of the potluck supper dishes brought by dancers have been polished off and folks are out on the scuffed wooden floor, following the patient instructions of caller Wayne Battleson as he explains the steps of the first dance. With his long brown ponytail and cordless headset microphone, Battleson looks like he might be more at home fronting a heavy-metal band than explaining do-si-dos.

But it’s obvious that he has a way with contra clarification. Even the beginners out on the floor learn very quickly how to differentiate between “active” and “inactive,” “top” and “bottom” couples. Before they know it, they have graduated to sashays and balances, stars and courtesy turns.

Then the band strikes up, and it’s time to put the newly acquired terminology into action. Joining the band on stage are a couple of musicians who are sitting in. That too, Russell said, is a part of the contra dance tradition.

“Anyone who wants to can come up and play on stage with us, but whether or not they’ll be on microphone is another matter,” she said. “The group spirit is the pervasive idea.”

Meanwhile, there is quite a mix of ethnic backgrounds, ages and fashion styles out on the floor. One dancer who looks to be about 12 is swinging his partner with the best of them in high-top tennis shoes and a pink shirt stamped Off Limits. But the youngest participant is 15-month-old David Blair. He giggles with every bounce as his mother, Zona, balances him on one hip and gamely extends her free hand to various partners up and down the line. A few dancers zip through the steps with no-nonsense looks on their faces, but most looked relaxed and smile frequently, taking time to make funny faces at little David.

Battleson’s calls are easy to follow, but when someone loses the way, there are usually arms reaching out to help errant dancers back into proper position before they reel entirely out of control. The quick, rhythmic clasping of hands and synchronized negotiation of turns can be strangely thrilling--perhaps a bit like trapeze work, with just a fraction of the risk.

Ruth Shapin, 59, a lawyer from Orange, has been coming to the Anaheim dance since its early days. “I like the sociability of contra dancing--the way you dance all up and down the lines,” she said.

Her husband, Ted, a 62-year-old engineer, said the Shapins’ daughter recently participated in a “dance friendship exchange” in the Soviet Union. “They brought their own band and caller and taught the Soviets how to contra,” he said.

In a sea of pastel summer clothes, Shannon Batts’ black miniskirt and boots and Steve Jackson’s skull-print pants and fedora make them stand out in the crowd of dancers. Yet they too are contra veterans--and regard themselves as the resident jesters as well, always stirring up mischief even as they execute steps skillfully. Jackson frequently punctuated the beat of the banjo music with a tweet on a whistle, and he and Batts led all the dancers in shouts of “lemonade!” to rhyme with the caller’s command of “promenade.”

“I got into dancing because I wanted to have a chance to play and use my body and have a release after sitting around and being intellectual all day,” said Jackson, 30, a Census Bureau edit clerk.

“This particular dance is different from all the other contras I know,” said Batts, 26, a psychiatric aide and a graduate student in the counseling program at Cal State Fullerton.

“This dance is very community-oriented,” she said. “We bring out food and flowers and children. The other dances aren’t like that. (Those) are just three hours of hard-core dancing.”

During the band’s break, a couple of the musicians strolled over to a reporter to offer a cup of lemonade and a quick tutorial about the “old-time” music they play at contras.

“You need a good tune that allows you to follow the dance throughout,” said Ira Gwin, 49, director of community development for the City of Commerce when he is not the main fiddle man in several bands.

“You should be able to sense through the music what the next dance move should be,” banjo player Jack Phillips elaborated. “We play a Southern Mountain Appalachian style of dance music, which is different from the New England style. They do a lot more jigs in six-eight time.”

Carty Wilson, a mandolin player from Long Beach, stressed that the music this band plays at contras is very different from bluegrass.

“One of the things we’re trying to do here is to perpetuate the older style of music,” he said. “Bluegrass is a flashy style primarily for performance. This style of music is pre-bluegrass.”

By 11:30 p.m., the lemonade jug was drained and all but the most die-hard dancers were tuckered out. Even the energetic children, who spent their contra time skipping rope and playing tag on the sidelines, were flagging. Some dancers helpfully dragged folding chairs into place for the youth theater group that would take over the hall the next day. Others made their way out the door slowly, picking up jelly jars full of dark brown honey that fiddle player Gwin had harvested from his bees.

Caller Battleson, a land-surveyor in his non-dancing time, offered the evening’s final opinion on why a quaint little activity like contra dancing is thriving in the shadow of the Matterhorn and other more glitzy entertainment alternatives.

“It’s vigorous, flirtatious, social and a way to have a fun time without going out to the bars,” he said. “And the people are just tremendous. You meet the best people contra dancing.”

Contra dancing takes place Saturday and every third Saturday of the month, from 7 to 11:30 p.m. at the Anaheim Cultural Arts Center, 931 N. Harbor Blvd., Anaheim. Admission: Adults $4, children free. Information: (714) 638-1466.