SOCIAL COMMUNITIES:

BARN DANCE

Bayliss Harsh (Lawrence, Kansas):  Barn dancing as kind of a revival of
the old time community dancing has been going on all over the country. 
Kansas City, Lawrence, Topeka, Manhattan -- all have monthly dances.  And
Pat O'Kowsky, when he bought this la nd ... oh, maybe about ten years ago
-- the first thing he did was fix up the barn so he could have concerts
and dances, which he's been having for now going on ten years.  And it's
great to do it in a barn.  A lot of dances, of course, are held in
community halls, church basements, school auditoriums, but there's nothing
like the ambiance on a beautiful night like this to dance in a lovely
barn. 

Narrator:  A vestige of our rural past, barn dances seldom take place in
barns any more.  For one thing, there simply aren't many large barns like
the one standing here on Stony Point Ranch in Douglas County.  For
another, the people who attend barn dan ces now mostly live in cities
rather than in the surrounding countryside.  On this fall evening, a
special barn dance has been organized by Lawrence resident Bayliss Harsh
and her husband. 

Harsh:  Well, I've been barn dancing for probably fifteen years, and my
husband has been playing fiddle for about seven years.  So, he loves to
play music; I love to dance; and we've had a lot of fun putting on this
party. 

Narrator:  With music provided by Doug Dubois and the Euphoria String
Band, many of those who came to this dance have become familiar faces at
the monthly dances sponsored by the Lawrence Barn Dance Association. 

Harsh:  The Lawrence Barn Dance Association got started in the fall of
'82. We dance to live music.  There's a number of good old-time string
bands around and fiddlers around. 

Narrator:  These dances also involve a dance caller, who calls out the
steps that the dancers follow.  People generally think of these callers in
association with square dances, which also come to mind when they first
hear about barn dances. 

Harsh:  It could be square dances and it also could be contra dances,
which are from the northeast.  They're like the Virginia reel -- a long
line of men, a line of women, doing different figures. 

Narrator:  In contrast to square dances as they're generally presented
today, the contra dances have retained more of the flavor of what we think
of as a traditional barn dance, as local dance caller, Mike Rundle,
explains. 

Mike Rundle (Lawrence, Kansas):  Modern square dancing took off and has a
whole different life of its own and a huge following across the country. 
But this is kind of a throwback to an age of more of a social event and a
lot more time to interact. 

Narrator:  As the evening progresses, the dancers become more familiar
with each other and with the basic dance steps. 

Rundle:  It just kind of comes together, and there's some particularly
magic moments when the music just gets an energy that kind of infuses you
physically, and when you and all these other group of people are kind of
moving together and getting carried a long, good music just can pick you
up off the floor and bad music can drive you right in to the floor. 

Harsh:  One thing that I've especially enjoyed tonight -- lots of families
brought their kids and we've had kids of all ages and some little girls
who are having a blast up there jumping around and dancing and a few
younger kids who've been joining in the dances, and that's really fun to
see.  So it's nice to have something for all ages, for everybody. 
Everybody's welcome, and that's a nice feeling. 

Rundle:  But you find different parts of the country where very
experienced dancers ... because they value that experience that you get
when things are going well, you can find people who are hostile to
beginners or less forgiving, I guess.  But Lawrence started out as a very
small group of people just trying to create something almost out of whole
cloth -- a few people grew up with the experience and knew what it was
about, but totally green dancers and inexperienced musicians -- I think we
were infused with this idea that we had to make people feel welcome and
make them have a good time and do whatever we could, so I think Lawrence
has a thoroughly ingrained tendency to be more forgiving and welcoming and
orient the whole evening to bringing new people along and keeping fresh
blood coming in all the time. 

Harsh:  One thing that's nice about the contra dances is you kind of walk
through them, and then when the music starts and you actually do the
dance, the caller still talks the call.  For people who have never done it
before, it's great if you come early in the evening, because that's when
the most explanation is given.  Forty-five minutes before the dance starts
there is instruction just for the basic moves.  And that's really nice. 
But you don't have to come to that. 

Rundle:  There is that sense of watching musicians develop and dancers
develop and there are probably a whole catalog of weddings that have kind
of happened from people meeting at dances.  But it's the regularity of it
-- at least once a month, you know y ou can get together with the same
people and the special events that people go to outside the area, and you
kind of build this circle of friends that just keeps on growing. 

Harsh:  The Lawrence dances have close to a hundred or over on a
once-a-month basis, and a lot of these people I've seen the same faces and
people coming for years on a semi-regular basis. 

Rundle:  It's kind of an amazing collection of people -- you get engineers
and computer nerds and social scientists and office workers and mechanics
and farmers.  It's more of a traditional melding pot, where you really
bring diverse sections of the community together. 

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		(Copyright 1997  KTWU/Channel 11,  Topeka, KS.)