Folkways Center of the Georgia Mountains<\/a>, which purchased the church in June — feature figures and forms as eclectic as America itself.<\/p>\nWe covered a mishmash of cultures. A little Irish. A little English. They all crossed the Atlantic, headed down the Appalachian Mountains and somehow ended up in an old church basement in Northeast Georgia.<\/p>\n
Everyone had a different name for what we were doing: Southern figure dancing, American folk dancing, Appalachian square dancing, even something called contra dancing.<\/p>\n
But I believe Katie Kelley, John’s 9-year-old daughter, characterized it best. “It’s fun,” the fourth grader from Norcross said succinctly.<\/p>\n
“I like a lot of dancing,” added Katie’s 11-year-old friend Rebecca Van Galder. “I just like meeting new people and switching partners and doing the different dances.”<\/p>\n
Some folks, however, just come for the music, played live by the Potluck String Band. Sixty-five-year-old George Alexander, of Tucker, didn’t leave his seat for a second.<\/p>\n
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<\/span><\/p>\n“I love this music,” Alexander said. “It’s the dancing I never cared for. I play senior softball and I play golf. I do all sorts of things, but dancing ain’t one of them.”<\/p>\n
Alexander’s friend Pat Rachels, of Conyers, lamented, “I just can’t get him out there.” That didn’t stop Rachels, however.<\/p>\n
“This is the first time I’ve ever square danced,” Rachels said. “It’s much easier than I thought it would be. Of course, I wasn’t too good that last time.”<\/p>\n
That’s OK. Nobody seemed to notice. Nobody seemed to care.<\/p>\n
“It’s a dance of little organization,” Russell said. “You’re not coming to develop a skill. You’re coming to enjoy yourself. It’s a social thing. You just want to be good enough that you’re comfortable.”<\/p>\n
Russell and Davis explained each dance before it happened. It never got too complicated.<\/p>\n
“OK,” Russell said at one point. “Too much practice isn’t good. Let’s dance. If you don’t get it on the first go round, you probably will on the second or third or 37th. It’s pretty repetitive.”<\/p>\n
Then the Potluck String Band started strumming, and Russell started calling:<\/p>\n
All together now right hand star,<\/em><\/p>\nBack by the left hand not too far,<\/em><\/p>\nFace your partner do-si-do,<\/em><\/p>\nFace your corner do-si-do,<\/em><\/p>\nSwing your partner round and round,<\/em><\/p>\nNow find another couple and circle up four,<\/em><\/p>\nGo find another couple and circle up four,<\/em><\/p>\nBrand new couple and a brand new four.<\/em><\/p>\nForgive me if I didn’t get all the words exactly correct. Sometimes it was hard to hear Russell over all the laughter.<\/p>\n
“It’s a great way to meet people and have fun,” Dahlonega’s Suzanne Berninger, who attended with her husband and two teen-age sons, said. “Good exercise. Great music. It’s a great community thing. That’s what I would call it.”<\/p>\n
And it’s relatively easy. Even a rangy sports writer can get the steps down.<\/p>\n
“If you know your right hand from your left hand, you can learn to dance,” said John Kelley, who played the banjo when he wasn’t dancing. “It’s more homemade, more old-fashioned than what your gym teacher would have done. It’s very relaxed social dancing.”<\/p>\n
Relaxed is just what Tom and Mary Cissell, of Ball Ground, were looking for. Years ago, they gave Western square dancing a try. It burned them out.<\/p>\n
“Western is a lot more intricate,” Tom said. “You’ve got to memorize a lot of stuff.”<\/p>\n
And if you happen to forget something?<\/p>\n
“Everybody gets mad at you,” Mary said. “It’s very stressful. That’s why we quit.”<\/p>\n
There’s no stress at the Folkways Center, that’s for sure. Just good music, good people and good fun.<\/p>\n
Oh yeah, good cookies, too.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
December 27, 2001 \u00e2\u20ac\u201d Everything in the mountains is laid back. Even the dancing. “You don’t have to know anything,” John Kelley said to the crowd in the basement of the old Dahlonega Baptist Church two Saturday nights ago. “You can’t make any mistakes.” Advertised as “an evening of old-timey …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[37,11,12],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/danwashburn.com\/sportinglife\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/danwashburn.com\/sportinglife\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/danwashburn.com\/sportinglife\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/danwashburn.com\/sportinglife\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/danwashburn.com\/sportinglife\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=16"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"http:\/\/danwashburn.com\/sportinglife\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":550,"href":"http:\/\/danwashburn.com\/sportinglife\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16\/revisions\/550"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/danwashburn.com\/sportinglife\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=16"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/danwashburn.com\/sportinglife\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=16"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/danwashburn.com\/sportinglife\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=16"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
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