The Dance
My favorite music has always been folk music. I’ve played acoustic guitar since I was 13. During college, my roommate taught me how to be more proficient at playing. And after college, a colleague of mine got me interested in folk festivals and playing music in my class. I also started learning how to play other instruments like the violin/fiddle. I became a member of the Long Island Traditional Music Association (LITMA). In the 1980’s I was introduced to contra dancing.
For those of you that have never heard of contra dancing, it’s a folk dance similar to square dancing where couples face each other in two long lines rather than in a fixed square group of 4 pairs. In contra dancing you dance in your group of only two couples for a set number of moves, then each couple moves either up or down a position, making a new set of two couples to do the same routine. This constant changing of couples continues until the music stops. If you and your partner reach the end of the line, you just reverse the direction in which you move after each routine.
LITMA had contradances every month. I always went to them. Early in 1985, I became a member of a Contra Dance band, called Raw Bits. In the band, I would play the fiddle, mandolin, and sometimes autoharp. It was fun playing in a group, even though I wasn’t that good. I still went to contra dances even when I wasn’t playing. Sometimes I danced during breaks when I wasn’t playing a particular set. The thing about contra dances is that you are constantly changing partners. So you get to meet a lot of people. At one such contra dance, I danced once with a woman that had caught my eye while I was playing. I didn’t find out her name at the time.
On October 5, 1985, all the members of Raw Bits had been invited to a party at the house of one of the dancers from a recent dance we had played at. I decided to go. This was right after Hurricane Gloria, and luckily by October 5th, power was restored in the area where the party was being held. Also as luck would have it, the woman that had caught my eye at that dance earlier in the year lived there. I found out that her name was Christina. We danced a lot more than once that night. As I’ve noted in other writings, I certainly fell in “like” that night, and over the next few weeks, I fell in love. Christina moved in with me in 1987 and then on October 5, 1989, as we celebrated our 5-year anniversary at a Mexican Restaurant in Port Jefferson, she surprised me and said, “Yes”. We were married the following March of 1990.
We planned our own small wedding. It was held at a friend’s house. We had a small group of string players that played music for it. As the ceremony ended, Christina and I danced to the song that we had picked out that represented the story of our meeting. It was recorded by Anne Murray ©?1980 for the movie “Urban Cowboy” (a movie which I’ve never seen) and is called Could I Have This Dance. The song was sung by the musicians that played for our wedding and when the first chorus came by, I sang it also to Christina, while we were dancing.
If you don’t know the song, you can understand why we picked the song when you hear the lyrics. Here are the first verse and chorus.
I’ll always remember the song they were playin’
The first time we danced and I knew
As we swayed to the music and held to each other,
I fell in love with you.
(Chorus)
Could I have this dance for the rest of my life?
Would you be my partner, every night?
When we’re together it feels, so right,
Could I have this dance, for the rest, of my life? **
After the first time the chorus was sung, we stopped dancing and were congratulated by all the people that attended the wedding, while the musicians continued to finish the song.
Suffice it to say, we don’t go to contra dances anymore. But we do continue to dance in our hearts and with each other. We both have known each other for more than half of our lives, and the sentiment remains. I wouldn’t have it any other way.
** If you would like to see the part of our wedding with me singing here is the link: https://youtu.be/rr_X0iHTA4U
