Newcomers In Old Virginia

We Make History holds its first-ever ball on the east coast and shows a hall full of enthusiastic guests how it's done in Old Virginia.

As related by Private Christopher Francis of the 1st Virginia Volunteer Infantry.

(More photos to come!)

"We have Yankees tonight," I observe. Officers in blue arrive to add some balance. "Usually it's the opposite. We have more Confederates than Federals."

Reassurance is my weapon. I carry it in lieu of a rifle as I greet the families strolling into the comfortably-sized hall with the wooden floors. Most of the gentlemen enter in modern-day suits with their ladies in hoopskirts. The room blooms with color like a Virginia garden in April.


"Private Francis!" my Captain calls. "Why haven't you offered to pose with this lady for a picture?"

Shouldn't she make that offer? I think as I catch a smile from the young lady in the deep blue gown before me, among the first to arrive. Is she not beautiful enough to stand on her own? Yet I follow orders.

"I have a hard time remembering names," I disclaim to a family. "So I may very well just say to you Sir, Madam or My Lady."

Some are familiar with English Country Dance. Other say, or I deduce from their voices: "I've never done this before."

"Do not fret," I respond. "You're in for a wonderful evening. The dances we are going to be doing are very simple, much less fancy than 18th Century dancing. We teach as we go. And if you mess up, just dance on."

"I'm not a good dancer," one tells me.

"All you have to do is walk. If you can walk, you can dance. And we're going to prove it to you."

Our Captain takes the rank of Dance Captain to call and demonstrate a few basic steps: how to honor your partner, how to turn your partner, how to do-si-do, how to form a star, how to sashay -- and most importantly, why the gentleman always stands to the lady's left. The arrangement hearkens back to a more chivalrous time, when men carried swords on their left hips to protect from attack. If the lady is standing in the wrong place...

"Ohhhh!" the Captain's lady demonstrates as a mock sword is drawn.

"Did I tear your dress?" her partner inquires.

A few example couples practice the simple steps, but the rest won't try them just yet. We begin as always with a welcoming promenade, couples lining up behind the captain in a march about the hall progressing into a long snaking line of ladies and gentlemen with the. The Captain maneuvers them into a spiral and then out again, obviously drawing inspiration from Stonewall Jackson's flanking march at Chancellorsville.

Back in a circle, he pays tribute to various guests, inviting them to walk forward and back.

"Those wearing blue!"

"Those wearing gray!"

I walk out during both calls, mistakenly, but with good reason. The 1st Virginia wears both blue and gray on their uniforms. But nobody minds. We dance on.

"Those under 20!"

"Those over 20!"

The perfection of arrangements reveals itself. At many a dance, the hall can barely contain a huge circle of guests. This time things fit perfectly. Even without a microphone, our Captain's voice carries across the room even though he must project. Our four-piece band -- banjo, fiddle, guitar and flute -- navigates through technical hurdles with laudable dexterity. The leader even adds historical notes on each song they play.

A mixer follows, and now the guests show what they have learned -- circling and do-si-doing and two-hand turning their partners before flowing into a promenade about the room.

"The other way," I suggest to a couple behind me as we learn the promenade step. They face clockwise. My partner and myself face the opposite direction. Then I look about and find -- to mild embarrassment -- my lady and I are actually the ones facing the wrong direction. Three years of experience on the floor and I still need correction. But we dance on.

"Now wasn't that simple!" our Dance Captain observes, constantly reassuring, constantly encouraging his troops.

Our guests master the basic steps. Now comes the dance that will elevate their skills to the next level -- reeling. The Virginia Reel will follow soon enough, but our Dance Captain starts with a set dance that incorporates the reel with only a few other moves. As I expect, I am asked to head one of three sets. I cannot fail here. The danger in reels sprouts from logistics: the head couple must swing around exactly one and a half turns. Then that couple works their way down the line, taking turns swinging someone of opposite gender and then swinging themselves until they get to the bottom. Forget about that extra half turn, and men come face to face with men, and ladies with ladies. Couples hurriedly cross back to the proper side of the line, hastily swinging to get back in time with the music. Some forget to swing their partner again. Some accidentally skip someone down the line.

The newcomers, however, learn fast. They working through the pattern slowly under the Captain's guidance. A few collisions and misplacements arise, but he is rooting for everyone: "Cheer them on, folks!" They soon reel like they have danced all their lives, and I am not surprised. Our guests may come from Arizona, Texas, Kentucky and Maryland as well as Virginia, but they all dance like Virginians. Clouds of doubt and uncertainty dissipate with each reel down the line. The smiles break through. The warmth of fellowship and joy of the ball is rooting itself within them. I know it well.

It gives all of us confidence as we try something new: a unique circle mixer called Borrowdale Exchange, and the meaning of the name emerges as three couples in a circle join together in a six-handed star and then loose themselves one couple at a time into a freestyle promenade. Dancers weave about like traders in a stock exchange before the call to reform into circle sets.

"It's an exchange. It's crowded," I say to my partner as we promenade our way out of congestion on the floor and into a new set. Undoubtedly couples find themselves abandoned or try to join full sets. The Dance Captain indulges them, letting them try sets of six.

We approach the limits of physical dexterity. Right-hand stars, even with hands held high, simply cannot form with the limits of our reach and the available space among 12 bodies. Children disappear in a huddle of dancers. Couples lose sight of their hands. Walking slows to a tiptoe as foot space vanishes, but everyone tries their best to preserve the figure and clasp to whatever fingers they can touch. Some mismatched couples peel off into the promenade, laughing as they reform into to the way they were.

The band plays a waltz and I seek a partner among the newcomers. "I'm not much of a waltzer," I warn to the lady in blue. I have warned that to ladies for three years now, thinking my simple two-step plain and ordinary among the patterned grace of the 1st Virginia belles. One of those belles shows me a box step -- yet again -- during the evening, but my feet slip back into their two-step pattern. They prefer it that way, as do my eyes, wanting to focus on the countenance of the elegant and graceful young woman before me.

Her eyes dart about and she giggles a little.

What? I wonder. Am I too serious? Not smiling enough? Dragging my feet? Do I have something on my mouth from the last break for refreshments? But I don't ask. We dance on.

Later, I hear some reassurance: "They tell me you're the best dancer."

"They do me too much credit," I say. "Who says?"

She grins and chuckles, but does not reveal her source. I know it has to be one of the Arizona contingent -- my brothers and sisters in Christ, dance, and history. How can somebody think that when they've seen me waltz?


Our guests are warmed up and confident. "Are you enjoying yourselves?" I ask during another break for refreshments, but the answer is obvious. It's time for the Virginia Reel.

Once again, the glorious burden falls upon me to head up a set, although our newcomers are learning fast. Once you master the reel, everything else moves simply and symmetrically involving the top and bottom couples of the set while everybody else claps and cheers.

"You do this like a pro!" I proclaim to my partner as we sashay down the set.

"Oh stop it!" she teases.

Yet everyone is a pro, like they've been dancing all their lives. This is Virginia. The reel ends to the cries of "Huzzah!" echoed throughout the room, cries growing louder throughout the night.

We proceed to "Chase The Squirrel," an wild round of gentlemen chasing ladies and ladies chasing gentlemen accented with sashaying and copious swinging. Wool uniforms stand up to the torture test, but hoopskirts cry for mercy. One of them breaks on a young lady's finest, jutting out from her dress like a saber. It slashes the air until her mother yanks it out and tosses it aside.

Although winded, the gentlemen pause to offer a verse of "Carry Me Back To Old Virginny," aided by our Lieutenant, happy to join us again after a long time absent on special detail. Our first attempt failed to impress the captain. The second fares much better.

Now the ladies must make an offering of their own, not from their mouths, but from their feet. Once again, it is time for the traditional shoe dance to determine the partners for the next Virginia Reel. Each lady removes one item of footwear, tossing it into a pile while the gentlemen soldiers stand at attention, about-face. They shoulder and fix bayonets on their rifles of air.

"Company... CHARGE!"

The secret, I have found, is not to emerge in front of the hard-pressing pack but to linger a bit behind, where in the scramble for shoes, an article of footwear undoubtedly slides from the pile, right into my hands.

My new partner claims her shoe, and we claim a place at the top of another set. Just as we are preparing to start, however, she dashes out of the hall.

"Wardrobe malfunction," another lady hurriedly explains.

I formulate plans to reel with a virtual partner should I be left solo, but she arrives in the nick of time.

The guests roll through the figures with abundant confidence, laughing at mistakes and reeling on.

"Over here. Over here! That's it, you've got it! Huzzah!"

Everyone is clapping now, realizing outbursts of joy are perfectly acceptable and, in fact, expected.

They could likely dance the reel for half an hour, but the longest dance of the evening is the simplest one: the Pineapple Dance, the mixer where three sit in a chair, one holding the token of hospitality, passing it to another, and sashaying off with the third. Two new dancers fill the empty seats, and the game continues. It takes a moment for our newcomers to pick up the rhythm and flow, but once they do, they are unstoppable. They even learn to cheat when three men or three ladies end up in the chairs, tossing the pineapple to someone else in line and sashaying as a hollering troika down the lines of couples. I gallop with a lady of the 1st Virginia and we finish with an improvised simultaneous twirl worthy of a medal. I cannot stop laughing.

Fifteen minutes of unbridled euphoria, and we arrive at the final waltz of the evening. Although I try my best to find a lady I have not danced with yet this evening, I find the lady in blue is unconnected to a partner, and I will not leave her wanting. We ease into a two-step.

"You've got to twirl her," another couple next to us prods.

So I do, lifting my right hand and letting the lady spin twice around. Another lady has shown me how to do a double twirl as opposed to a single. It all begins with the placement of the hand in a particular position in relation to the face depending on the number of times around. But we don't follow strict protocol. I cannot remember it, anyway. We dance on.

Our Dance Captain heaps praise on our guests in his closing words, the evening exceeding all expectations. Now, as we leave the hall, it's up to all of us to carry the spirit of the dance forward. Two and three weeks from now, this night will still be fresh upon our minds, he says, and we can take the honor and respect into our circles of friends and family or anyone else in our lives. And more dances shall follow in Virginia, perhaps in Yorktown, for one. We have much to look forward for.

"You were right, Christopher," one man tells me, saying the evening was indeed as wonderful as I had promised. Nobody walks away disappointed.

"What does 'Huzzah' mean?"

"It's like 'horray!'" I explain. "Actually, it's more 18th Century than 19th Century, but it has sort've become a trademark."

Logistics and schedules inhibit a post-ball feast. But on the modern-day carriage ride back to the inn, I think once again about my first We Make History ball and how it changed my life forever. I think about how many lives were touched this night, the many smiles on many faces. Undoubtedly, some will sit up for hours with afterglow, but mysteriously, I am not one of them as I drift off -- perhaps dancing in my dreams.