GEORGE F. LEE / GLEE@STARBULLETIN.COM Pat and Merv Meyer of Chase, British Columbia, swirl around the dance floor during a Square Wheelers event. Square dancing spread globally during World War II, thanks to American GIs.

It’s a square world
... after all

Despite a recent drop in popularity,
a group of dancers still feels
it's hip to be square

---

By Scott Vogel
svogel@starbulletin.com

If you stop square-dancing, well, they've won.

OK, so maybe you never square-danced before Sept. 11. Or perhaps it's a relic of your ancient past, those long-forgotten days when taking the hand of a member of the opposite sex was akin to holding a dead fish. In any event, square dancing needs your help. In fact, twirling a partner and extending a left allemande may well be your patriotic duty.

Now to be truthful, it's unlikely that Osama bin Laden deliberately targeted square dancing as one of Western culture's excesses. Still, when the world descends on Honolulu this weekend for the 37th annual Aloha State Square and Round Dance Festival, it will be a somewhat small world, the turnout yet another casualty of the slump in tourism following last autumn's events.

"In years past we would typically have 400 dancers from all over the world show up," said Dave Lemon, 60, club president of the Square Wheelers and a board member of the Hawaii Federation of Square Dancers, a consortium of 12 clubs on Oahu, Maui and the Big Island. "We'd have 50 to 60 from Europe and 100 to 150 from the Pacific Rim nations. This year's attendance is down to about 150 total, with no European dancers at all, none from Japan. We've had people from Saudi Arabia, Sweden and Norway in years past."

GEORGE F. LEE / GLEE@STARBULLETIN.COM Marilyn Bartow of Petaluma, Calif., and Lowell Hershy of Portage, Mich., also do the do-si-do.

While you couldn't help sensing the disappointment in Lemon's voice, the greater shock, at least to this reporter, was in learning that they toe the line in Tokyo, sashay in Stockholm, do-si-do in Dubai. Perhaps Osama had reason to fear square dancing after all, its proponents packing no small amount of cultural imperialism under their petticoats.

"There are over 10,000 square dancers in Japan," said Lemon, "1,000 in one club in Tokyo alone." Of course in Japan, as elsewhere, there's a perennial problem with male participation. ("The men are too shy to get out there and dance," which is laughable when you consider that square dancing, at least for men, typically involves merely walking to the beat. The more complicated moves are carried out by women.) Nevertheless, the Japanese gracefully sashay around the man problem by encouraging women to dance both parts.

"They wear a sash if they're dancing the male part, which is great because the women learn to dance any part of the square," Lemon said.

GEORGE F. LEE / GLEE@STARBULLETIN.COM From left, Judy Doakes, Herb Doakes, Virginia Black, Jim Black and Lee Parmenter politely nod to their partners as they begin another dance at a Waikiki Aquarium event sponsored by the local club, The Square Wheelers.

IT WAS World War II, and especially American GIs, that led to the cultural diffusion of square dancing, a form of social dancing that has existed in some form or other for centuries but which attained its modern form -- four couples led by a caller -- thanks to the early American settlers of New England. The isolation of an agrarian society coupled with the arrival of immigrants of disparate backgrounds created the need for organized activities that would bind communities. Even today, wherever square dancing is practiced, the calls are always uttered in English. ("So it's real funny," said Lemon, "when you have a German, Japanese, Chinese and American couple in the same square who can't talk to each other but can dance together.")

The fortunes of the art form have ebbed and flowed ever since, square dancing sometimes confined to isolated pockets, sometimes breaking out as a mainstream popular entertainment. Its last peak was in the late 1950s and early '60s, when no fewer than 1,800 dancers would travel to Hawaii annually and the Aloha Festival was held in the Blaisdell Center.

Since then, square dancing's been on a long downward slide, a decline that can't be attributed to terrorism, of course, unless it be the self-imposed terrorism of a coach potato culture that values solitude over social contact.

"We're becoming a very hermetic, stay-at-home society," said Lemon, referring to a trend that's been noticed by both professional and amateur sociologists alike.

"We don't go to fraternity meetings. We don't go to large social groups. People stay home with TV and the Internet and what-have-you. We go out and spectate rather than participate. So people are watching sporting events rather than participating in them, going to stage shows instead of doing things themselves."

OF COURSE, a cultural shift away from social participation is one of square dancing's problems, but there are two others that bear mentioning. One is the abandonment of square dancing by the schools, with the result that today's fifth- and sixth-graders will never know the pleasures/terrors of sweating through an afternoon of "San Antonio Rose." Another is the perception that square dancing is kind of, you know, square. All the hay bales, barns, bolos, bandannas -- do we really want to look like rejects from an "Oklahoma!" road company? And what about the "my-truck-is-broke-and-my-wife-has-left-me-and-my-dog-died music," as Lemon memorably described it?

AS IT TURNS OUT, square dancing is drifting away from the country-western tradition, a departure that's most striking in the case of the music. While Elvis Presley still sends them scrambling to the floor, "Pink Cadillac" is a big hit locally, as is a reggae-inspired dance called "Deo" and a riff on the theme from the old "Popeye" cartoons.

"New records come out every day based on popular music. All a song needs is 128 beats per minute and 4/4 timing," said Lemon.

And if your excuse is the forbidding complexity of square-dance steps, Lemon's club, the Square Wheelers, sponsors a 20-week course for novices that teaches all the basics. Potential dancers also are encouraged to attend this weekend's festival and watch as a uniquely American art form struggles gamely to march into the 21st century.

What you'll find is three hours of effortless exercise -- roughly five miles of dancing, according to Lemon -- that burns up to 800 calories an hour. You'll also discover an intergenerational activity participated in by dancers as young as 11 and as old as 85 (thanks to square dancing's ability to "add 10 years to your life," according to a study cited in the United Square Dancers Association News).

And if you're single, well, so are half the members of the Square Wheelers, all of whom are encouraged to rotate partners throughout the course of a typical evening.

"Several matches have come out of it," Lemon admitted, needless to say.

Sounds like a pretty painless way to contribute to the war effort, if you ask us.

Swing your partner What: The 37th Annual Aloha State Square and Round Dance Festival When: 7 p.m. tomorrow; grand march at 6:45 p.m. Saturday Where: Ala Wai Golf Course Clubhouse Ballroom, 404 Kapahulu Ave. Cost: Free to watch; $10 for dancers Call: 456-8465

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