English country dancing adds a classic spin to campus dance culture
If you happened to be walking through the Haggar foyer on the evening of Wednesday, February 11th between 8 and 10:30 pm, you might have noticed something rather unusual even by University of Dallas standards: a group of students doing the kinds of dances you might see in a Jane Austen movie. If you’re wondering who they were and what they were doing, the simple answer is that they were having an English Country Dance.
English Country Dancing is a type of social dancing that originated in England and Scotland and eventually migrated to the United States. All English Country Dances (also called contradances) are partner dances, but many of them involve changing partners several times in the course of the dance. During one of these dances, somewhere between four and fifteen couples, depending on the dance and the size of the event, perform a repeating set pattern. Many English Country Dances have a particular song that goes with them, though they can often be danced to other songs with a similar tempo and beat. Examples of English Country Dances include the Virginia Reel, Hunting the Fox, Hole in the Wall, and Posties.
The dance on Wednesday was hosted by UD’s Swing Club, which provided snacks and drinks and advertised the event. However, the idea for the event came from freshman Math major Sophia English, who taught and called all the dances on Wednesday night. She and Aine O’Brien, the leader of Swing Club, collaborated in planning the event.
English said that the idea to have an English Country Dance first came to her last semester. She said “I saw a space in the art village that was really, really pretty and about the right dimensions for having some kind of dance…but it turned out to that it was going to be a lot more complicated than we thought to use that space, and so we decided instead to have a long term plan of doing an event in conjunction with Swing Club, and as a precursor to that we would get eight or so people together to learn some dances so that they could demonstrate them.”
With the help of some friends, English gathered a group of ten people interested in learning, and potentially demonstrating, English Country Dances. They started having weekly meetings in late October. Though the group was initially formed in expectation of having a more formal event, English said that it quickly became “more of an independent group who have learned most of the dances I know and are well on their way to becoming proficient with them.” The group grew quickly and now has around fifteen regular members, and upwards of fifty in their group chat who occasionally come. They have decided not to pursue club status yet, since most of their members will be going to Rome next year.
Around thirty people attended the event on Wednesday. English said her favorite dance of the evening was Hole in the Wall. She said “I love the music that goes with it, and…everyone picked it up really well…It’s a very pretty dance to watch because it’s quite slow and stately, and you can just follow it very easily with your eyes.” Freshman Ambrose Pagano, one of the founding members of the group, said that he had two favorite dances, Posties and Hunting the Fox. He said “Sophia did a great job calling the dance and leading the event…It was pretty well organized, but it could have been better communicated to UD students as a whole.” English agreed“I would like to see more people just passing by be interested…I feel like it was mostly friends of friends who came who don’t usually come.”
English said that she has been doing this type of dancing for around six years. She said “I got started because it is a tradition that has developed over the years at my church and school…we do at least two big dances every year. So I’ve done most of the dances often enough that they’ve become pretty much ingrained in my memory.” She continued “[T]here are quite a few things I do like about it. I like that it does have the partner element to it, so you get to spend time with boys in a way that’s not terribly weird, but it’s also part of a big group…And as a group, altogether you’re making something beautiful.”