Finding the pulse.
I actually looked up whether it was a full moon this weekend. It has seemed like that kind of a feeling.
Little things, like the server spilling hot water on the table as she brought me tea.
Bigger things, like the fact that the internet has been goofy - and inaccessible - all over town.
And then weird things, like last night at the Ballroom.
I have written about the Ballroom before, but I don't know that I have written about it in great detail.
In the late 1800s, there was a movement called "Chautaqua," born out of a town in New York (called Chautaqua) which was meant to bring great minds and great art to the masses - the democracy of education beyond schools and beyond schoolchildren. From the first establishment in New York, similar venues popped up all over the country. It was, in Teddy Roosevelt's assessment, the most American enterprise. In this region, one of the Chautaqua sites was on the outer borders of Washington D.C. Nestled in the middle of a wooded glen and at the foot of the home of Clara Barton's American Red Cross, Glen Echo brought lectures, actors, musicians, preachers, and participants out of the sweaty swamp of Washington D.C. to listen to Big Thinkers under the refreshing breeze off the C&O Canal.
While the Chautaqua movement in America peaked in the early 1920s, Glen Echo's intellectual camp transformed in the early 1900s to a first class amusement park. Owned by the streetcar company, the Park was the end of the line for the Washington Street Car and the woods echoed with the giggles of children hopped up on cotton candy, and the squeals and flirtatious twitters of teen-agers thrown against each other in the arms of the "Cuddle," the bumper car or any of the other rides carefully designed to press the edges of acceptable social behavior. The enormous "Crystal Pool" drew lines hundreds of people long to get away from the sweaty swamp of Washington D.C., and the Big Band greats played to a pulsing, twisting, hopping crowd of dancers in the Spanish Ballroom: a large, open wooden dance floor, surrounded by vaguely mediterranean columns and arches and encapsulated by stuccoed walls evoking the style of Spanish missions. The cool breeze off the Canal pulled in through the windows and provided some relief to the dancers as they paired off in the darkened promenade around the dance floor.
In the 1960s, lots of things happened: the fear of polio had closed the Crystal Pool in the 1950s and it never quite recovered, whites resisted integration and determined to stay in the sweaty swamp rather than be thrown together with their black neighbors, and the automobile put the streetcar out of business. Glen Echo amusement park languished and finally closed in 1968.
In 1971, the park re-opened under the auspices of the National Park Service and with a new mission as an arts colony. Today, the skeleton of the amusement park can be seen in flourescent signs for the popcorn vendor, the cuddle, the bumper car, the Crystal Pool, and in the sing-song tunes coming from the Carousel that sits in its center. Wooden yurts offer arts and crafts, and classrooms and a puppet theater live in the buildings which used to offer concessions. Large stone towers hold a flourescent sign drawing people to the Park, with one of the original streetcars parked in front. During the day in the summer, the park is over-run by children and their parents, who are the perhaps unconcscious heirs to the original Chatauqua. But on a Saturday night, the park is a different animal all together.
Every Saturday night that I can manage it, I dress in cute skirts and tops and drive for almost an hour to experience the Spanish Ballroom, which was fully and beautifully restored just a few years ago. I cross over a short wooden bridge that spans a ravine, and wind my way down the path into the park, lit by gentle lamps. The yurts and educational gardens are asleep, exhausted by their afternoons efforts with thousands of small children, and passing the still carousel, the only lights are those from the amusement park remains...and the warm glow from the Spanish Ballroom where the dancers come from three states and beyond to take the hand of a partner, jump, twist, and pulse as dancers have for eighty years.
The dancing there is as good as anywhere in the country. Anyone who believes that swing is dead need only come on a Saturday night and see the hundreds of dancers. Many of whom are rank beginners who come for the free hour-long lesson, with a significant contingent of competetion-class dancers, and the majority of those who fall somewhere in between. To come when one of the better bands is there is to witness the magic that transforms all of these people into hundreds of individuals, paired off into hundreds of partners, dancing in hundreds of different combinations of moves, but somehow achieving a single pulse.
Last night, though, was different. I had fun dancing, but it wasn't a night to dance every dance - it was a night to accept dances whenever offered (which was often), but also to watch and learn. Despite the terrific band - one of the best, although not my favorite - and a large crowd of people, that singular transformation never happened. Watching the dancers, even as they moved to the beat set by the orchestra, there was never the same pulse. It just was....off...just a little. I was ... off ... just a little. Where I am not a great dancer (despite what my friends at GFD think), I am a good dancer, but my feet just never quite hit the same effortless rhythm that I have become accustomed to. I had to close my eyes in order to feel the lead of my partners and to feel the beat. And it wasn't just me, it was the interactions of the others: the older, bearded man who seemed to be doting on me, and the (previously written of as drunk and usually completely silent) dancer who not only spoke a LOT, but could not speak without uttering profanities. The only thing that seemed consistent was the unpredictable behavior of the ridiculous man whose very ridiculous unpredictability was the only consistent thing of the night.
Little things, like the server spilling hot water on the table as she brought me tea.
Bigger things, like the fact that the internet has been goofy - and inaccessible - all over town.
And then weird things, like last night at the Ballroom.
I have written about the Ballroom before, but I don't know that I have written about it in great detail.
In the late 1800s, there was a movement called "Chautaqua," born out of a town in New York (called Chautaqua) which was meant to bring great minds and great art to the masses - the democracy of education beyond schools and beyond schoolchildren. From the first establishment in New York, similar venues popped up all over the country. It was, in Teddy Roosevelt's assessment, the most American enterprise. In this region, one of the Chautaqua sites was on the outer borders of Washington D.C. Nestled in the middle of a wooded glen and at the foot of the home of Clara Barton's American Red Cross, Glen Echo brought lectures, actors, musicians, preachers, and participants out of the sweaty swamp of Washington D.C. to listen to Big Thinkers under the refreshing breeze off the C&O Canal.
While the Chautaqua movement in America peaked in the early 1920s, Glen Echo's intellectual camp transformed in the early 1900s to a first class amusement park. Owned by the streetcar company, the Park was the end of the line for the Washington Street Car and the woods echoed with the giggles of children hopped up on cotton candy, and the squeals and flirtatious twitters of teen-agers thrown against each other in the arms of the "Cuddle," the bumper car or any of the other rides carefully designed to press the edges of acceptable social behavior. The enormous "Crystal Pool" drew lines hundreds of people long to get away from the sweaty swamp of Washington D.C., and the Big Band greats played to a pulsing, twisting, hopping crowd of dancers in the Spanish Ballroom: a large, open wooden dance floor, surrounded by vaguely mediterranean columns and arches and encapsulated by stuccoed walls evoking the style of Spanish missions. The cool breeze off the Canal pulled in through the windows and provided some relief to the dancers as they paired off in the darkened promenade around the dance floor.
In the 1960s, lots of things happened: the fear of polio had closed the Crystal Pool in the 1950s and it never quite recovered, whites resisted integration and determined to stay in the sweaty swamp rather than be thrown together with their black neighbors, and the automobile put the streetcar out of business. Glen Echo amusement park languished and finally closed in 1968.
In 1971, the park re-opened under the auspices of the National Park Service and with a new mission as an arts colony. Today, the skeleton of the amusement park can be seen in flourescent signs for the popcorn vendor, the cuddle, the bumper car, the Crystal Pool, and in the sing-song tunes coming from the Carousel that sits in its center. Wooden yurts offer arts and crafts, and classrooms and a puppet theater live in the buildings which used to offer concessions. Large stone towers hold a flourescent sign drawing people to the Park, with one of the original streetcars parked in front. During the day in the summer, the park is over-run by children and their parents, who are the perhaps unconcscious heirs to the original Chatauqua. But on a Saturday night, the park is a different animal all together.
Every Saturday night that I can manage it, I dress in cute skirts and tops and drive for almost an hour to experience the Spanish Ballroom, which was fully and beautifully restored just a few years ago. I cross over a short wooden bridge that spans a ravine, and wind my way down the path into the park, lit by gentle lamps. The yurts and educational gardens are asleep, exhausted by their afternoons efforts with thousands of small children, and passing the still carousel, the only lights are those from the amusement park remains...and the warm glow from the Spanish Ballroom where the dancers come from three states and beyond to take the hand of a partner, jump, twist, and pulse as dancers have for eighty years.
The dancing there is as good as anywhere in the country. Anyone who believes that swing is dead need only come on a Saturday night and see the hundreds of dancers. Many of whom are rank beginners who come for the free hour-long lesson, with a significant contingent of competetion-class dancers, and the majority of those who fall somewhere in between. To come when one of the better bands is there is to witness the magic that transforms all of these people into hundreds of individuals, paired off into hundreds of partners, dancing in hundreds of different combinations of moves, but somehow achieving a single pulse.
Last night, though, was different. I had fun dancing, but it wasn't a night to dance every dance - it was a night to accept dances whenever offered (which was often), but also to watch and learn. Despite the terrific band - one of the best, although not my favorite - and a large crowd of people, that singular transformation never happened. Watching the dancers, even as they moved to the beat set by the orchestra, there was never the same pulse. It just was....off...just a little. I was ... off ... just a little. Where I am not a great dancer (despite what my friends at GFD think), I am a good dancer, but my feet just never quite hit the same effortless rhythm that I have become accustomed to. I had to close my eyes in order to feel the lead of my partners and to feel the beat. And it wasn't just me, it was the interactions of the others: the older, bearded man who seemed to be doting on me, and the (previously written of as drunk and usually completely silent) dancer who not only spoke a LOT, but could not speak without uttering profanities. The only thing that seemed consistent was the unpredictable behavior of the ridiculous man whose very ridiculous unpredictability was the only consistent thing of the night.