>La Grande Observer | Union and Wallowa Counties' News Leader

Community dancing — which includes contras, circles, squares, long-ways reels, Irish set dancing and English country dancing — occurs at the Olde Meeting House, 901 M Ave.,La Grande. ().

By Jeff Petersen

Observer Staff Writer

The blizzard raged all around. Highway workers were fixing to close the interstate at Meacham. But a dance beckoned, and nothing — not hail, sleet or a snow-filled barrow pit — was going to stop Bruce Mayfield, a Pendleton pharmacist, from reaching La Grande.

Community dancing — which includes contras, circles, squares, long-ways reels, Irish set dancing and English country dancing — is like that.

It gets in your blood.

No matter whom you ask, the enthusiasm for community dancing is contagious. And dancing seems about as good as Welcome Wagon at getting to know and feel at home in a new community.

The dance itself is a big ice breaker. Just ask Robin Stedfeld. She and her husband, Randy Tweten, a biologist with the National Marine Fisheries Service, moved here from Portland a year ago. They were old hands at contra dancing, having done it in Washington, D.C., and Portland.

"It helped us get hooked up with a great community (in La Grande)," Stedfeld said. "It's a relaxed, laid back atmosphere really welcoming of kids — and that's not true everywhere."

Going to dances is just the start. An offshoot is that community dancers will meet outside of the dances in groups to go to movies, share meals, have game nights and more.

And it's an activity for all ages. People at the spirit-filled, vigorous dances, or "heel-burners," run the gamut of ages and occupations, from high school and college students to people in their 60s and 70s, from blue collar to professional.

One professional who finds relaxation through community dance is Dr. Kevin Grayson, a pediatrician. "It's always welcoming of new people," Dr. Grayson said. He began work in La Grande full time in December 2001, having moved here from Pennsylvania.

"I come at it from an interest in music," he said. "I dabble a bit in piano and clarinet."

He usually goes to the Tuesday Night Dancing at the Olde Meeting House, which continues through the winter season with Irish set, contra and other folk dances, because that night he is usually not on call.

"It's a nice diversion for a couple of hours to do something completely different," he said.

It's relaxing, Dr. Grayson added, yet with aerobic benefits.

Others, like Mayfield the Pendleton pharmacist, enjoy community dancing as part of a bigger love of dance. He formerly did mostly ballroom and country-western dancing, but most of all he loves to waltz.

"Anywhere you go, though, your eyes get burned out from (cigarette) smoke," he said. "I appreciate the non-smoking and non-drinking environment."

There's no comparable group in Pendleton, he said, and he appreciates the people of the Northeast Oregon Folklore Society and their hard work that make the dances happen.

To join community dancing, you don't necessarily have to have a partner. You can go alone.

"My partner and I might dance together twice in a night (out of 10 dances)," he said. "It's not really important who you dance with. In contra dancing, you dance with everybody in the hall anyway."

It's easy getting started, Stedfeld added.

"The caller tells you what to do every step of the way," she said.

La Grande is lucky to have great music-makers and great callers like Mark Lewis, Carla Arnold and Larry Smith, she said.

Mayfield agrees. When he drives two hours from Pendleton through a blizzard to reach a dance, risking life and well-coordinated limb, you know there is some kind of magnetism there, a tonic for the soul.