LAST SATURDAY, DOUG Lester traveled from Port Townsend to the Olympic Lavender Farm, near the bluff overlooking Dungeness Bay.
There, with the help of Steve Yale, he unloaded a microphone, speakers and laptop computer and set up next to the drying shed.
Soon, the dancers arrived and were whirling over the grass to “Give Me That Old-Fashioned Rock and Roll.”
Lester is not a disc jockey but a square dance caller who was hired for the outdoor dance at the Strait Wheelers’ Lavender Dance weekend.
11th event
Held for the 11th year during the bloom, the lavender dance is a tradition, but the music and the moves are not.
“This is not your daddy’s square dancing,” Lester said as he queued up another pop song on his computer.
In addition to old-time fiddle tunes, modern square dancing is done to music of every genre: jazz to classical, gospel to rock — anything that can be arranged to have the right rhythm, Yale said.
The aerobic ante of the dance has also been upped — instead of head couples dancing while others wait their turn, all four couples in the square are in constant motion.
On Saturday afternoon, the patterns of the squares formed and dissolved as Lester instructed the couples to “wheel and deal,” “walk and dodge,” “spin your top” and, appropriate for the location, “pass the ocean.”
“It’s nice, light exercise and mental stimulation at the same time,” Yale said.
With the times
The technology has also changed. Lester said he used to drag four boxes of 45 rpm records to dances. Now, he just needs a laptop.
People who have not square danced since fifth-grade gym class need to take basic lessons, called mainstream, to learn the cloverleaf, flutter wheel and other eight-person configurations in order to prevent square traffic jams.
Then, dancers can go anywhere in the world and understand the calls, which have been standardized by an association called Caller Lab.
“Even in Japan, the caller calls in English,” Lester said. “They may be the only English words he knows.”
Some calls are actually French — “do-si-do” means “back to back,” he said, and “allemande,” the French word for German, is shorthand for an arm or hand swing characteristic of folk dancing in southern Germany.
Headed in the fall
That’s where square dancers from the Northwest are headed this fall, including members of the Port Townsend Rhody O’s, based at the Gardiner Community Center, and the Fern Bluff Squares from Monroe.
“It’s an open square dance trip to Austria and Bavaria,” said Carol Hammer, a Fern Bluffer. “We’re going to Oktoberfest and dancing with international callers.”
Hammer is taking her century book, in which she collects autographs of callers. She’s square-danced in New Zealand, Hawaii and all over the western United States and has already filled one book with 100 autographs and is working on a second.
“It’s like a dance diary,” she said. “You look at it and remember that Christmas Eve dance in Nevada.”
Dancers who participated in Saturday’s outdoor dance collected a “dangle” for their name badge and witnessed the birth of a new call — Mark Wheeler, who stepped in for Lester for two songs, changed “yellow rock,” the call for “hug your partner,” to lavender rock.
Calling them out
Wheeler came from Portland, Ore., with caller Jim Hattrick, who called the main dances Friday and Saturday nights.
This year’s lavender dance, based at the Sequim Prairie Grange near Carlsborg, drew 90 to 100 people, more than in past years, according to chairwoman Barbara Wright of Sequim.
Many were from Canada, including Pat Wemyss and Dianne Frampton of Victoria, who started lessons last fall.
The lavender dance weekend was the first out-of-town square dance event they ever attended. For others, it was the first visit to Sequim.
“We wanted to see the lavender fields — this is the fourth one we’ve seen,” said Patty McClellan, a member with husband Ken of the Square Crows in Woodinville. “We’ve bought some lavender plants here to remind us of our dance.”
Unseasonably cold weather delayed the peak bloom until after the annual Lavender Festival, but the lavender dance hit it, along with brilliant sunny weather, spot on.
At Olympic Lavender Farm, rows of dark purple English lavender stretch back toward the snow-topped Olympic Mountains.
“Now is the time to come and see it,” said Bruce Liebsch, co-owner.
According to Yale, the bloom had gone off square dancing by the 1920s, but a man named Lloyd Shaw revived it by teaching a group of Wyoming teenagers to square dance and taking them on tour.
Square dance clubs sprang up all over the United States and are now in 29 other countries, Yale said.
Weekly dances
Clubs in the North Olympic Council — Strait Wheelers in Port Angeles, Hoh Downers in Forks and Rhody O’s in Gardiner — put on weekly dances that offer an inexpensive night out.
“It’s a super-social activity,” Lester said. “For $5 or $6 a person, you get two hours of dancing, socializing and something to eat. And the coffee pot is always on.”
Despite the changes in music and moves, square dancers still swing their partners and promenade home.
On Sunday, the Fern Bluff Squares packed up and went back to Monroe, the Square Crows flew home to Woodinville, the Mavericks and Country Cousins circled their wagons and caught the ferry to Victoria.
The Strait Wheelers already have plans in place for the 12th annual lavender dance, Wright said, that include an outdoor dance among the purple blooms.
The Strait Wheelers offer basic (mainstream) square dance lessons starting the Monday after Labor Day at the Port Angeles Senior Center.
For more information, visit the North Olympic Council Dance website, www.gardinerwa.org/noc.
Full skirts and petticoats are not required, and if you have two left feet, Yale said, bring both of them.
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Jennifer Jackson writes about Port Townsend and Jefferson County every Wednesday. To contact her with items for this column, phone 360-379-5688 or email jjackson@olypen.com.
