Chapel Hill folk dancers build strong community

Muffled music can be heard coming from within the brick walls of the Beth El Synagogue Freedman Center on Wednesday nights. The tunes — traditional melodies from Norway, Egypt, Croatia and beyond — are unfamiliar to the uninitiated.

Inside are the members of the Chapel Hill International Folk Dance Club, who have gathered nearly every Wednesday night since 1964 to celebrate the world music and dances that have brought them together for 50 years.

The group celebrated its landmark anniversary this weekend with an extensive three-day reunion — part of which took place in the Great Hall of the Student Union.

“We’ve been working on this since January,” said Ann DeMaine, a member of the group who, with her husband, Bob, spearheaded the planning of the event.

Ann DeMaine has been a part of CHIFDC for decades, but her husband still has the edge — he’s been dancing for 49 of the group’s 50 years. Other dancers in the group describe the DeMaines as the heart and soul of the club.

Saturday’s event was, of course, all about dancing. It featured seven hours of participatory dances from the group’s repertoire. Former group members came from all over North America to coalesce for the reunion, returning to Chapel Hill from places as far as California and British Columbia.

Margaret Clemen, a member who’s danced with the group since 1968, said she fondly remembers the bonds shared with the group back when CHIFDC danced at UNC’s Presbyterian Student Center, its first home.

She also said while the group has evolved and members have come in and out, the connections have remained unchanged.

“For me, it’s still the same group it was when we were in the Presbyterian Center,” she said. “When people come back for the reunions, it’s like they’re coming back into the fold.”

Jeanne Sawyer is one such member returning to the fold. Sawyer danced with the group from 1968 to 1988 before she moved to the West Coast. She now lives in California and flew back for the weekend reunion, at which she not only participated in dances, but also accompanied them with fiddling and singing.

Sawyer enters the center with her husband — whom she met through folk dancing — to a round of applause from old friends and fellow members.

“It’s lifelong friends, and we can always come back,” Sawyer said. “When we moved to California, we had to not think about (folk dancing) for, like, a year just because we had to make new friends.”

One member calls out that the Scandinavian dances are starting soon. Sawyer shrugs off her purple jacket, nestles a fiddle against her neck and heads out to the center of the room to accompany the upcoming Swedish hambo as other members join in.

Mary Chrestenson-Becker began Scandinavian folk dancing at 13. She said she has since danced in every time zone in the United States, but she considers North Carolina her home.

“The appreciation for this type of dancing brings people from all over together,” she said. “It’s so beautiful because these intricate steps are like puzzle pieces, and it’s hard to learn, but when you get it right, it’s just effortless.”

As an independent, self-employed tutor, Chrestenson-Becker doesn’t have co-worker friends, so she turns to folk dancers for fellowship.

Dan Oldman has been dancing with the group since the early ’80s — a newbie by many of the group’s standards — and he has been CHIFDC’s treasurer for more than 20 years. It’s the only official position in an organization he calls “a successful anarchy.”

Now, he not only dances with fellow members; he’s joined dinner groups, attended CHIFDC New Year’s Eve parties and gone on an annual beach trip with other members for years. Looking to the future, he’s planning a move to Carol Woods Retirement Community with a large group of fellow dancers sometime within the next several years.

When asked what his favorite part of the group is, Oldman seems to speak for most members.

“I should be saying it’s the dancing, but it’s definitely the people.”

Oldman mills about for a few minutes, catching up with friends since seeing them last Wednesday — or last reunion — before he heads out to the dance floor, clasping hands with old friends to dance the Port Said, the daichovo, the Swedish family waltz.

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