The ladies—one in pigtails—are fiddling with their petticoats and pantaloons, the gents easing into shiny boots. There’s enough black calico to clothe a modest army. When a small voice lets out with a “Yeeeeeehaw! Ow, ow!” and banjos start strumming, a passerby can’t help but look around for a bale of hay to sit on.
Instead, there are only the suburban shrubs of White Plaza and the bemused smiles of Stanford academics as eight square dancers leap-step-step into a circle for the opening figure of their World AIDS Day performance. Caitlin Kline, a junior from Boulder, Colo., is the caller.
Straining to make her voice heard over the recorded bluegrass tune, Kline calls out the moves for a fountain formation, making sure each dancer is in place before advancing to the next step.
Ladies circle left while the gents run around
Turn that circle till your partner’s found
Then the ladies arch and step right back
Gents duck under to the inside track
Make that fountain bubble and flow
Way up high and way down low
Then join up hands and circle wide
Stretch it out like an old cowhide. . . .
The Cardinal Whirlwinds are turning heads as they help preserve a style of Western square dancing that is both an American original and a dying tradition. Performed by only a few groups nationwide, the dance, rooted in the Appalachians, is characterized by smooth, gliding steps and complex choreography. It features impressive aerial figures that use centripetal force to send ladies soaring above gents in any number of poses.
The idea of a backcountry folkway taking root on an erudite campus may seem incongruous, but Kline says the club has flourished since she started it last year. There are now about 30 members, and they have traveled as far as Alaska to perform in dance festivals.
“People don’t quite know what to think when they first hear about it, but once they see us perform they’re very excited,” says Kline, who taught herself to clog and fiddle —at the same time—while in grade school.
Kline started square dancing at 15 in Boulder. Colorado is the former home of Lloyd Shaw, whose name is synonymous with traditional American dance. As superintendent of the Cheyenne Mountain School in Colorado Springs, Shaw got rid of the football team and replaced it with a square dancing group after he’d become intrigued by the old “cowboy dances” of the region. Tracking down old-timers in remote mountain towns and mining camps, Shaw taught their moves to his high school exhibition group. Later he recorded the choreography in a book. Shaw’s Cheyenne Mountain Dancers toured the United States in the 1930s and 40s and launched a square dancing revival.
By the 1960s, the renaissance had petered out. Boulder is one of the few U.S. cities where old-fashioned square dancing still can be found. Aficionados fear for the tradition’s future because performers are mostly middle-aged and older adults. Kline’s establishment of the only college-age club of its kind offers some hope. Members of Calico and Boots, Kline’s hometown club, were delighted to see the Cardinal Whirlwinds in action when the group flew to Oklahoma City last summer to perform at the National Square Dance Convention.
“It was wonderful to see a group totally outside of Colorado performing this type of dancing and spreading it across the country again,” says Susan Seamans, a Calico and Boots coach who calls Kline “an amazing young woman. To pull 16 kids together who have never danced before and teach them to do this wonderful performance after just one year is a pretty amazing feat.”
Seamans taught Kline how to call during Christmas and summer breaks as Kline prepared to launch the club. Kline also had to learn how to sew the group’s Western-style shirts and ankle-length dresses, whose heavy skirts require 12 yards of fabric. (The resulting twirl whips up quite a draft when the dancers go spinning through the air.) This year the whole club, men and women, joined in a 24-hour sewing marathon—fondly referred to as “the sweatshop”—to make four more dresses.
Kline has a sense of duty about helping preserve an endangered heritage. “It kind of makes me sad that people aren’t aware of traditional American things,” she says. “When people say ‘American folk dance’ they don’t have a clear idea of what that is.”
It was partly the tradition’s egalitarianism that drew Kline in—her motto is “If you can walk, you can square-dance.” Its origins date back to the 1800s, when Old World immigrants traveled west, bringing with them their national folk dances—the Scottish schottische, the French quadrille, the English contra, the Irish jig and more. Finding it difficult to remember the steps to each dance as they gathered for group festivities, they came up with the idea of a caller to announce the moves so everyone could participate. Gradually the various dances melded.
“Square dancing is very much a dance of the people,” Kline says. “I think it’s a good example of how a lot of diverse people came together and created a style they could all relate to.” She also likes the interdependency of the dancers. “You’re not just dancing with yourself; there are seven others in your square.”
Club members say their experience defies the stereotype. “Everyone has this impression that it’s hokey, not fun—it’s not like that at all,” says Evan Parker, a fifth-year coterm in computer science. “It’s just like any dance. It’s movement, it’s music, it’s people.”
David Brown, an African-American sophomore who lives in the ethnic-themed dorm Ujamaa, says he has to fight off jibes from his friends when he tells them about the club. “People are like, ‘Why aren’t you in hip-hop?’ But after they see the performance they’re like, ‘Oh, I want to do that.’”
This year, the club is adding Appalachian clogging to its repertoire, thanks to Kline’s careful coaching. Her mentor thinks Kline may be unique in her ability to perform complex moves while playing the fiddle. “She’s a phenomenal clogger,” Seamans says. Rooted in the step dances of Ireland and Scotland, the dance also incorporates African and Native American rhythms, making it another melting-pot tradition. Kline calls the dance a cross between “tap dancing, Irish step dancing and square dancing.” At a recent practice, club members looked like seasoned experts after only two months.
Kline dances at least 12 hours a week; she also belongs to the campus social-dance performance group Decadance. While she plans to continue dancing indefinitely in some form, she sees it as a necessary balance to her life, not a career. Fluent in Spanish, German, French and Japanese, she is majoring in comparative studies in race and ethnicity and hopes to work with minorities in the field of education.
JEANENE HARLICK is a journalist living in Bend, Ore.
