News For June 20 - 26, 2005

Contents

• Dance of the week: National Square Dance Convention
• Oregon honors square dance leader on state quarter
• More Features ...

Dance of the week: National Square Dance Convention

The 54th National Square Dance Convention takes place this week in Portland. It starts Wednesday, June 22, 2005 and runs through Saturday, June 25. Dancing is at the Oregon Convention Center, 777 NE Martin Luther King Jr Blvd., Portland, Oregon.

The National Square Dance Convention® is the largest single gathering of square dancers anywhere in the world. The most recent convention, the 53nd NSDC in Denver, Colorado, gathered more than 8,500 dancers from every state and more than 20 countries. The first National Square Dance Convention was held in 1952 in Riverside, California.

Portland last hosted the National Square Dance Convention® in 1994. At 21,700 attendees, it remains the second largest convention ever held in the Rose City.

The convention boasts separate halls for Mainstream, Plus with Rounds, Plus (without Rounds), A1, A2, Challenge (C1-C3), Youth, and Handicapable. In addition, there will be three separate halls for Round Dancing (combined for dance parties), two halls for Clogging, and two halls for Contra Dancing.

The bulk of pre-registered attendees hail from Oregon, Washington, California, Colorado, and Texas. There are also sizeable groups traveling from as far away as Denmark, Germany, and Taiwan.

Callers include our local Bay Area favorites Bob Elling, Keith Ferguson, Eric Henerlau, Jay Klassen, Andy Shore, and Roger Smith. Round dance cuers include locals Sue Harris, Sharon Parker, and Kenji Shibata, and favorites Kristine Nelson and Ron Noble.

You can find out everything you need to know about convention here:
http://www.54nsdc.com

Oregon honors square dance leader on state quarter

by Hugh Noes, Staff Correspondent

The state of Oregon has selected the portrait of a famous square dancer to appear on their state quarter. They are doing so to celebrate the return of the National Square Dance Convention to Portland on June 22, 2005. The state quarter is being released on June 15.

Thanks to a generous donation by the Portland Oregon Visitor's Association, the NSDC will be able to share this piece of Oregon with registered delegates. Each registration packet will contain one Oregon quarter, along with a brief explanatory note card.

Most state quarter fans look at the wrong side of the coin, the side where bureaucrats use Powerpoint to combine clip-art images of flags, banjos, and birds into insufferable montages of state symbols. In the case of the Oregon quarter, this side consists of a rendering of Crater Lake. This drawing, while better than average for the state quarter series, is really a depiction of a big hole in the ground. This is hardly as scenic as ... um, well ... trying to think of a more scenic Oregon location but coming up blank. Back to that later.

Still, Oregon had the hindsight to select for the "other" side of the coin the greatest influence on square dancing this country has ever known. Few are aware that the "Father of our Country," and our first President, George "Pappy" Washington, was also the one who introduced square dancing into America. After the revolution, he wanted to create a dance form that combined the Schottishes and Quadrilles of the old country, but put a uniqely American stamp on them that would establish the new country's dance identity.

Washington's success was evident in the summer dances he hosted on the large lawn that would eventually become the National Mall. (This was before the Washington Monument was built, of course.) The dances were well attended, and sometimes the hotels could not accommodate the large crowds. In those cases, the President would open the Lincoln Bedroom and other White House facilities for use by the square dancers.

Last updated Friday 26 September 2008