Square dance squabble> Aficionados call for official statue

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You can dance the Charleston in Charleston. But if you want to do South Carolina’s official American folk dance, stop flapping your arms, grab a partner — and get ready to square dance.

And in the Lone Star State, you can do the Texas two-step all you want — but officially, it’s the square dance there, too.

Florida? Virginia? Connecticut? The official folk dance is … well, loyal citizens had best learn to do-si-do.

Since the early 1970s, square dancers have been doing a lot more than promenading to fiddle music. They have been writing letters, making calls — doing a grand right and left across the country to win official status for square dancing in all 50 states.

In the process, they have squared off with critics who say square dancers are making a national symbol out of a recreational hobby that has all the significance of a Tuesday night bowling league.

Meanwhile, a movement to give square dancing its due is also afoot here in Maine. During the upcoming session of the Maine Legislature, some lawmakers also will consider making square dancing the official dance of the Pine Tree State.

Legacy International, a square dance organization, has assigned members around the country to lobby state legislators in a quiet campaign to give legal designation to square dancing.

This might not have been necessary, had attempts in the 1980s to persuade Congress to declare square dancing as the nation’s official folk dance succeeded.

Apparently enough historians and scholars testified against the proposal in 1984 and 1988 to block it. But Legacy has pressed ahead on the state level.

“We’re trying to get as many states to make it the official dance so we can go to Washington D.C. … and have Mr. Clinton make square dance the national American folk dance,” said Helen Cavanaugh, co-chairman of Legacy’s legislative campaign.

Legacy claims that 29 states now have square dancing laws on the books. Pennsylvania may become the 30th. In June, its state senate voted 45-4 for a measure that designates square dancing as the “official American folk dance of the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania.” It awaits action in the House.

State Sen. David Heckler of Pennsylvania said he opposed the measure because it grants special status to a single cultural form to which many Pennsylvanians have no connection. While square dancing’s roots have been largely traced to England and France, millions of Pennsylvanians have roots elsewhere.

“I’m Pennsylvania Dutch, and nobody that I’m aware of in the Heckler family did square dancing,” he said.

In Maine, State Rep. Robert Tufts (R-Stockton Springs) plans to sponsor a bill during the upcoming 118th legislature to make square dancing the official state folk dance. Dances with similar steps such as line, contra and round, as well as clogging, quadrills and reels, are also included under the term “square dance,” Tufts said.

A similar bill sponsored by state Sen. Raynold Theriault of Fort Kent failed to pass in 1991. Last year, yet another square dance bill sponsored by Elizabeth Watson, state representative in District 82, and Dale McCormick, state senator in District 18, never made it to the floor because it was submitted after the deadline for introduction of bills.

Watson said that one reason the bill may not have passed in 1991 was because the term square dance was “too narrowly defined.” According to the legislator, since the newly proposed legislation includes other types of dances, it may stand a better chance of passage this time.

Tufts said last week that the legislation will be also be bolstered by historical documentation asserting that square dancing has its very roots in Maine.

According to writer-historian Charles Francis of Monroe, who will present the history of square dancing in Maine to the state’s Education and Cultural Affairs Committee, square dancing “as we know it today” most likely evolved from the English and Scottish country dancing which the early settlers of Cumberland and York counties brought with them from Great Britain.

Francis, a selectman and a retired high school teacher whose passion is square dancing, said he is optimistic that his research will give a boost to the passage of the proposed bill. If it doesn’t pass this time, he said, “we’ll just keep on trying.”

According to Marlene Thompson of Jackson, who has been working for passage of a square dance bill since 1991, the state boasts around 39 active square dance groups and thousands of square dance aficionados.

Many people are unaware of “how much good there is in square dancing,” said Thompson, who, with her husband, Clifford, chairs the annual New England Square and Round Dance Convention which will be held in Bangor next April. Last year’s four-day get-together, which also was in Bangor, drew more than 2,600 participants, she said.

“Square dancing is such a friendly, loving activity,” said Thompson, who has been dancing since 1951.

“Wherever you go to dance, you feel like you’re in a homey place. Everyone hugs each other when they come and when they leave.”

Meanwhile, Dorris Soucy of Gardiner, who helped McCormick and Watson in their efforts to pass a square dance bill last year, maintained that “it’s about time that square dancing was named Maine’s official state dance.”

“We’ve got a state bird, a state flower and a state song,” said the square dance aficionado. “I can’t think of a more appropriate dance for Maine. It involves so many people of all races, creeds and colors.”

Other square dancers around the country agree.

“No matter where you go, you can dance the square dance,” said Cavanaugh of Legacy International, who met her husband at a square dance 28 years ago.

“We want to make people more aware of it, to get it into the school system so children learn it,” she said.

There are square dance clubs across the country: from the Times Squares in New York City to the Pistols and Petticoats in Fort Wayne, Ind., to the Capital City Squares in Sacramento, Calif.

A 1992 survey found that about 500,000 people square danced regularly at least twice a month, according to George White, executive director of Callerlab, which represents 3,000 square dance callers around the world.

But many square dancers are senior citizens, and the numbers are declining because “people who are in square dancing are dying off,” White said.

Cavanaugh insists that no other dance embodies America or the nation’s settler spirit during its pioneer days, that square dancing is as American as the log cabin and Davy Crockett — but more vibrant than those faded symbols.

But others don’t see it that way. Robert Dalsemer, past president of Country Dance and Song Society, a Massachusetts-based organization that promotes English and American folk dancing, said half of the basic square-dancing calls did not even exist before 1960.

He claims Legacy wants to get square dancing into the school curriculum — a good way to reverse its fading popularity.

Dalsemer, who testified against a federal square dance bill in 1988, said he does not have the resources these days to match the lobbying effort put forth by square dancers in 50 states.

“What you’ve got is a bunch of older retired people who are into modern square dancing. It’s a big social thing for them, and they have time to spend lobbying for it,” he said.

Resistance to square dancers is low; few opponents have stepped forward in the states where square dance legislation has become law. One of the few holdouts is Hawaii, according to Legacy’s short list of “inactive states.”

“Square dance doesn’t represent us,” said Alyce Blevins-Polak of the Denver-based Foundation for Pacific Dance, established to preserve and perpetuate Hawaiian culture.

“People should be able to do square dancing if they want to, but they shouldn’t foist it onto us — no more than the hula should be forced on anyone.”

NEWS reporter Ruth-Ellen Cohen contributed to this story.