Some Historical Notes on
Walla Walla
by Daniel N. Clark
About 1975, Stanley and Relta Tucker began holding old time square dances for their
family and friends at the Tucker Timberrib, the recreation building
When we lost Lee Perkins, our
old-time caller, neighbor Richard Bixby began calling the dances. By 1984, Richard started adding a few contra
dances, a phenomenon he had become acquainted with at the Port Townsend
Festival of American Fiddle Tunes that same year with Jon, Trudy, and their
friend Sue Gerling.
In 1985, inspired by what
they saw at Port Townsend, Trudy, Jon, Richard and Sue decided to form an
organization to promote traditional music and dance forms in the Walla Walla area, and asked me to help with the legal work. On
The next month's concert
featured six singer/song-writers:
Charles Potts, Jimmy Turner, Ron Hendricks, Kurt Lash, Gary Burton, and
Barbara Clark. Barbara had written her
first song in 1979, and by then had composed about 20 songs in the folk
tradition with mostly political content, which she had been singing around at
rallies and events. Other early WWFM offerings included folk and jazz concerts,
children's music, clog dancing workshops, a bluegrass jamboree, jam sessions,
and an open mike coffee house which has continued to be a popular event offered
several times a year.
Our December 1986 dance was a
going-away party for our caller, Richard Bixby, who was moving to
In January, 1987, to replace
Richard, we invited veteran contra dance caller Larry B. Smith from La Grande
to put on a callers workshop for us, and as a result Howard Ostby, Judy Fenno Morrison, Todd Silverstein and I began to share the
calling at our monthly dances, with music by the Wednesday Night Band, an open
group of WWFAM members led by Trudy on the fiddle. Though Judy stopped calling after a couple of
years and Todd Silverstein moved to Salem in 1989, Howard and I have been
regularly calling our monthly third Saturday dances ever since, sometimes with
the help of other callers. In the summer
of 1988, we also added a first Wednesday dance at the bandstand in
Regional contra dance and
music camps have been an important source of new dance and music styles for us,
beginning for several of us with the Fall 1987 Lady of the Lake Dance Camp at
Lake Couer d'Alene sponsored by the Spokane Folkore Society. The featured specialty dance that year was
Cajun, which caught our imagination. In
1988, Barbara and I started teaching Cajun two-step, waltz and jitterbug to the
music of Frenchie and the Swamp Rats, later renamed
Crawfish Pie, a Cajun band composed of Jon St. Hilaire
on accordion, Trudy on fiddle, Glenn Morrison on bass, Joe Corvino
on guitar, and Howard Ostby on the scrub board.
The following year's camp featured swing dancing, which Barbara and I
also started to teach on occasion to the tunes of Swing Shift, composed of Jon,
Trudy, and Glenn, along with Jerry and Julie Yokel.
Contra Dance Classes.
Contra dancing is a
wonderfully vigorous, community-building activity that soon had most of us
realizing we had never had more fun in our lives. An evening of contra dancing usually involves
a circle and a square or two along with several contras, which are done in a
line of partners, similar to the Virginia Reel.
In these dances, which came from early pagan rituals and later French
Quadrilles and English Country Dancing, couples dance with every other couple
in the set, and partners are constantly changing throughout the night, making
them highly sociable events. The music is lively, most often a fiddle band
playing high energy English, Irish or American jigs and reels, along with waltzes
and polkas.
To bring this zesty
experience to more people, in February 1992, Barbara and I offered a four-week
series of beginning contra dance classes in the Dietrich Dome at
Our initial announcement for
the classes included the following:
There is nothing so necessary to human beings as the
dance…Without the dance, a man would not be able to do anything….All the
misfortunes of man, all the baleful reverses with which histories are filled,
the blunders of politicians and the failures of great leaders, all of this is
the result of not knowing how to dance.
--The Dancing Master in Moliere's Le Bourgeous Gentilhomme (1670)
The merits of dancing are widely debated. A view contrary to the above praise was
expressed by the Rev. J.D. Crane in Popular Amusements (1869):
The devotedly pious, the truly pure in heart, do not
dance. Dancing wastes time, wastes
health, scatters serious thought, compromises…character, leads to entangling
associations with frivolous minds and careless hearts. Young people who are famed as "beautiful
dancers" are generally good for nothing else.
Closer to home, Todd Silverstein, who loves the
flirtatious aspects of the dance, has given us the following wisdom by an
unknown author:
A good dance should include respect and importance for
partner, flirtatious possibilities, plenty of activity, and above all grace—a
smooth flowing statement emphasizing the dancer's real life predicament—in
short, an eight minute marriage.
Many of us in the
I would not have you a dancer; yet when you do dance,
I would have you dance well."
--Lord
Chesterfield to his son (1750)
Dance Retreats.
Friends of Acoustic Music had
talked for some time about putting on its own dance camp, so in 1995 I agreed
to organize a Wallowa Lake Dance Retreat, to be held at Wallowa Lake Lodge near
This worked out very well, so
when we came back in 1996 we followed the same routine with an added Saturday
afternoon couples dance workshop.
Barbara and I taught the Irish polka, some special waltz moves, and the
Salty Dog Rag; for the evening dance we invited the local band Off the Cuff to
join us, along with caller Larry Smith.
The only problem was the owner of the lodge, who didn't want us to
invite people from the community to join in the dancing, which is why we held
the evening dance in
As a result we looked around
northeastern
In 2000, we moved the retreat
to the
We wanted to repeat the
experience for 2001. Unfortunately, we discovered that the clog dance teacher
who was renting the hall at the airport had given up her lease and that the
Port of Walla Walla, which owns all of the airport
buildings, was planning to tear out the wooden dance floor and stage and convert
the building to a warehouse with a concrete floor. In researching its history, I learned that
the building had been built in 1941 as the black soldiers’ theater at the army
airbase located there during World War II, when military services were segregated.
Since dance halls are fairly
rare, particularly those with a history like this, we approached the Port with
a proposal to save the building and to make it available to the public at least
on an interim basis, which they agreed to do.
With that reprieve, WWFAM agreed to begin holdings its monthly dances
and other events there, including a benefit dance to raise funds for the
hall. Before long, it was leased by the
Unity Church of
With the renovation going on
at the airport hall, WWFAM membership chair Brenda Sims took charge of the
successful 2001 Around the Town Dance Retreat featuring the Portland Band
Feline Groovy, using three different area halls at various times during the
weekend. The following year the
Northeast Oregon Folklore Society in La Grande took responsibility for the
retreat, which has continued as the Spring Music and Dance Festival, while most
of our monthly dances continue at the newly renovated airport hall.
Dancing in the
Community.
Since contra dancing is a
very informal activity, unlike club square dancing with its special clothing
and complicated moves, it can be easily taught to inexperienced dancers, and
has become a hit at community events, including annual barn dances at Whitman
College begun in 1987, and barn parties at Walla Walla
College, which WWFAM members have been calling and playing for for many years.
WWFAM has also held public
dances as a part of the program at the Whitman Mission National Historic Site
and at the Downtown Walla Walla Concert Series and
other events, and its members continue to present music and dance for a variety
of other community institutions and gatherings.
Through concerts, dances,
coffee houses, song circles, retreats, workshops and other events, Walla Walla Friends of Acoustic Music has been dancing and
playing in the community for many years, and we hope to continue for many more.
August
2001