Rachel O’Donnell reports on her August 2021 experience:

This year I had the great luck to be a recipient of the CDR scholarship to the American Dance and Music Week at Pinewoods Camp in Plymouth, Massachusetts. Being at camp and dancing after the long isolation of the the pandemic was such a tremendously cup-filling, joy expounding experience.

What I valued most was the feeling of tremendous connection to a diverse group of people. But when I returned home I noticed that there isn’t much of that kind of connection in my normal life, maybe especially because the delta strain of Covid 19 has upended the expectation of things getting back to normal this summer. The biggest challenge has been how to bring the connections and the dance-joy super charge home and share it in a positive way without blowing out the receptacles of the less fortunate people who weren’t there. How do we bring that connection home with us? The connections at camp seemed to happen because we would make more eye contact, smile with our eyes, touch hands, say what we needed, ask for permission.

As contra dancers, we make connections through the thousand instantaneous but tiny messages we share to move through the figures together: some messages are verbal, but most are through our eyes, our hands, the weight we give. When we are understanding each other’s language, we spin at just the right speed, we stay in time to the music and there is harmony in the universe. Sometimes the messages don’t get across, the figure falls apart and we all laugh and try to get back to the right place. It can be fun even when it doesn’t work!

Swimming squares!

Rachel, Cindy & Jilli

When we share a moment of dance joy, we then have something in common- a moment of silliness, of fun- and later we might catch each other’s eye walking by, and smile. Still later we might talk at the break and actually learn about each other. Seeing everyone on the same page, even when there is no music, even when the caller stops calling, is seeing the possibility for something better in our divided culture.

The connections are the cream we’ve churned to butter with our dancing feet. We’ve made something real and delicious and useful there. How do you listen to someone you’re sharing joy with, differently from someone you’re in an e-troll argument with? We make so many assumptions about each other’s generations, each others choices, each other’s lives and lifestyles, without knowing. It’s so sweet to learn from each other.

The evening dance

The thing I’m trying to do, after camp, is to notice older people and younger people, and people whose ideas I think are different from mine, who I might not normally reach out to, and start a conversation. Ask questions, be open to hearing all the answers, make more eye contact, smile with my eyes, touch hands, say what I need, ask for permission.