A Weekend Of Stories

We gathered for our annual Fall Dance Camp in Becket, Massachusetts. We have two every year, currently one at the end of April/beginning of May and one in October. This fall's camp marked the 20th Anniversary of the gathering of this community. In many ways, it wasn't much different from our usual camps. In others...

For many of us--a large majority of the "core" membership--who began this journey in our late twenties and early thirties, we now find ourselves approaching our fifties, or already there. In terms of tenure, I am one of the community's elders. In terms of age, I fall somewhere in the middle. I am dancing with folks who are old enough to be my parents and young enough to be my children. I became part of the community in 1991 through a series of gender-free contra dances sponsored by the Triangle Community Center. I went to my first camp in February 1993 (back when they were held in February and September) and have only missed two since then due to health reasons.

We are a community that preserves its history through stories and through archives. To help celebrate the 20th anniversary people brought photo albums and the "official" archives of Dance Camp. Chris Ricciotti, the Queen Mum (as we lovingly call our founder), brought a print out of the timeline project, which started a couple of years ago. It began with sheets of paper taped together with years marked on them. Chris asked us to jot down the events of our own dance histories. Every so often he will print it out, bring it to camp, post it, and ask us to continue adding our stories. It is a living document, a continuing story of our community.

Saturday night at the end of the Variety Show Chris showed a short film compiled from videos taken by various community members over the years. We saw our younger selves (I'd almost forgotten that I still had a mustache when I started dancing with this community!); we saw those who have moved on and those who have passed on. There were cameras at this camp to record it in moving pictures and still.

We shared stories around meal tables, at night around the fireplace, and sitting on the edges of the dance floor. We passed on our stories to the newer members of the community, bringing them into the community's story as they begin to add their own parts to it.

There were tears. There was laughter. There were hugs. And, of course, there was dancing.

The story continues.

Peace,
Jeff