Club News - October 2023

by Dominique Vrolyk

October 10, 2023.

Our new season started with a bang. At our September 13 Open House, we saw 48 dancers on the floor, with the lovely surprise of seeing four young families join us! From ten to seventeen years old, they proved to us “older folks” that youths can definitely learn, in a hurry! It is a different experience to dance with a shorter person (some are way taller!), but we can adapt, as the enthusiasm of our twenty new dancers has injected fun and excitement in our weekly Wednesday evening dances! At our “Bring a Friend” dance the following week, we had a crowd of 60 dancers. How fun!

Longtime members, new dancers and first-time visitors happily congregated, happy to hear the dynamic voice of Gary Winter, our fun and skilled caller who also seemed thrilled to see the new season start!

Our club president Tom Gray is proud to share that we currently have 20 new dancers and 22 new members. Having survived the almost 3-year hiatus of the Pandemic, our Club is proud to still be dancing at Telford House, an impressive log cabin-style hall managed by the Leduc & District Seniors Society, on the shore of Telford Lake in downtown Leduc.

For those who started dancing in the fall of 2022 and in January of this year, it was critical to keep dancing and learning after our club season ended in May… So, many of our dancers joined longtime and new dancers on Wednesday evenings (our usual dancing night in Leduc) at the CDCDA Summer Dances. What a wonderful experience, to dance every week with various skilled callers and 6 to 8 squares on the floor! Cudos to CDCDA president Janice Fendall for coordinating these exciting teaching dances!

Onto an event that was on my ‘new’ bucket list… The 54^th Square & Round Dance Convention took place in Lacombe Alberta, on September 1-4 2023: the first night saw 168 registered dancers! We had 14 Leduc dancers attend, so exciting! The dance floor remained packed until the very last dance! Meeting so many keen dancers, hearing the fabulous callers and cuers from all over Western Canada and watching the Round Dance demos were a highlight for me.

Leduc Square Dance at 2023 Lacombe Convention. L to R: Dominique Vrolyk (Club V-P); club caller Gary Winter; Susan Heming; Les Duxbury; Jeanette Morrison (Treasurer); Rick & Betty Prieston; Cheryl Mann (Secretary); David Hodgkinson; Clark & Laura Piercey; Dawn & Tom Gray (President). Missing: Walter Wychopen. Photo courtesy of James Chan.

We are hosting a Halloween Dance on Wednesday October 25 (@ 6:p45 pm): costumes are encouraged and visitors are always welcome!

We look forward to welcoming fellow dancers ~and longtime friends~ from many other clubs as well as members of the public at our Annual Homesteader Night, a fun dinner and dance! Tickets are still available ($30. each) from club members or by e-transfer (treasurer@leducsquaredance.ca).

For more info on these two exciting events, feel free to contact our Leduc Club pres, Tom Gray (info@leducsquaredance.ca) or me, Dominique Vrolyk, Happy Homesteaders Club VP at 780-977-1715.

See you in a square, in the near future!