Dance Mistress Patricia Campbell—

A Love Of Dance Can Be Shared With All Ages

“All the ills of mankind, all the tragic misfortunes that fill the history books, all the political blunders, all the failures of the great leaders, have arisen merely from a lack of skill at dancing.”                       

                         —Moliere

“Dance first. Think later. It’s the natural order.”                                     ––Samuel Beckett

“It’s what I always wanted to do, to show the laughter, the fun, the joy of dance.”

            ––Martha Graham

 

By Jan Howard

A Newtown woman brings to life the words of Moliere, Beckett, and Graham. Patricia Campbell loves to dance, and that love of dancing has led her to many different types of dance and to dance calling.

She combines her love for music and dance with organizational and directional skills to bring the joy of dance to children and other adults.

“One of the things I love about calling dances, apart from the music and seeing people have fun, is to watch the wonderful patterns the dances make as the people dance the figures,” Ms Campbell said. “The first time I stood on a stage to call a dance for a large group of people, I almost got lost in watching the patterns they made – almost forgot to call.”

The dancing mistress for the Loyalist reenactment group DeLancey’s Brigade, Ms Campbell began dancing when she was 5 years old. She and her sister, Randi Gerry, attended modern dance classes Saturday mornings at the Martha Graham School of Dance in New York City.

When she was 9, her family moved from Bayshore, L.I., to Pennsylvania where she took ballet lessons and studied piano.

While attending Antioch College, Ms Campbell discovered an interest in Eastern European folk dancing.

“People would get together on a big square, and have folk dancing,” she said. She continued her interest in folk dancing while seeking her master’s in special education at Southern Connecticut State University. It was there that someone told her about contra dancing. She tried it and, “I fell in love with it.”

In the mid 1980s, Ms Campbell had her first experience calling a dance at a church in Boston. When asked, she protested that she was a dancer, not a caller. She was told to “go learn.”

She contacted John Foley, the founder of NOMAD (NOrtheast Music And Dance Festival, a three-day festival presented locally each fall), who she had met at a dance. When he assured her she could learn to call a dance, she spent two weeks with him learning how.

The dances, she explained, are very mathematical. Most of the music has an A part of eight bars and repeat, and a B part of eight bars and repeat, for a total of 32 bars. “Most figures are 16 counts,” she explained. She listened to tapes in the car, counting to eight, “to see if I could hear when it changed to the next section.”

In contra dancing, the dancing mistress calls the next step before the dancers perform the figures. “This is true of 18th Century dances in general,” she said.

In 1987, she presented a contra dance for NOMAD, where she met Fran Hendrickson, and through her, Chip Hendrickson, who Ms Campbell said, “is a dancing master in many ways.” The following year she led Colonial dance session at NOMAD.

“It is a wonderful venue of diverse types of dancing and music,” she said. For more than ten years, she has been developing dance and music programs for NOMAD, now offering four or five different dances and music at the same time.

Through the Hendricksons, she acquired a taste of 18th Century dancing by attending a workshop where she met reenactors from DeLancey’s Brigade. She has called dances for DeLancey’s for presentations at historical societies, museums, reenactments, and other events.

“I loved the dressing up, the gentility of it, the manners and civility of it, that are of prime importance,” Ms Campbell said. “I watched, listened, and copied. In between dances, Chip would rattle off information. He was a ton of information.”

When Mr Hendrickson was at Colonial Williamsburg in 1990, he asked Ms Campbell to take over leading his dance workshops in Newtown. “I was astounded at the time,” she said. “So much of the things I’ve done have required a crash course. I spent a lot of time at his home, listening to music and learning. He came back in May, and I felt relief in giving the workshops back.”

She continues to call dances for functions at the Waldorf School where her son Alexander is a student, and for Girl Scouts and father-daughter dances. Her first dance event at Waldorf was a fundraiser, and the following fall she taught a four-week dance class to the school’s first through sixth graders.

Her dance classes at the school have included circle dancing, English country, and playground dances. She also began Maypole dances, which she admits she knew nothing about. “I learned,” she said. She is planning a more complicated Maypole dance for next year.

She is also teaching Morris dance, which the English have danced for 100 to 200 years, to the school’s third grade. “I taught them the Peopleton [pronounced Poppleton] stick dance to ‘Pop Goes the Weasel,’” she said.

 “I had never danced Morris dancing,” Ms Campbell said. “I read a book, went to a practice, and danced it. Once I had it, I could bring it back to the kids.”

In colonial days, Ms Campbell said, balls and assemblies might go on for days. The event would start with a minuet, with honors to the most prestigious person present, followed by cotillions and country dances.

“The most recent bride would be asked to call a dance,” she said. This meant she would pick the dance, and then might be asked to “speak” the dance. It would not be called during the dance, because the dancers knew the dance.

A dancing mistress in colonial times might have had a dance school, but she would not have been asked to lead a public ball, Ms Campbell explained. “The master of ceremonies was a dancing master.” However, she noted, “There is some documentation that if there was no master available, a mistress might be asked.

“They loved to dance, and everybody danced,” she said. To be invited to an assembly, a man had to be a gentleman of good character. “He would not get a ticket otherwise.”

In addition to her dancing and calling interests, Ms Campbell is a reader at Sts Peter and Paul Mission Eastern Orthodox Church in Bethel. She and her husband Bill have lived in Newtown since 1992. She worked as a special education teacher in Bridgeport and Stratford for ten years. She now works part-time from home for her own desktop publishing and consulting business, PGC Communications.

She is a member of the Country Dance and Song Society, a national organization headquartered in Boston to preserve and promote traditional dance and music. She helped form The Reel Thing and promotes use of live music.

The role of the dancing mistress is to teach and call dances through the evening. “Some are simple enough for beginners. There are a whole gamut of dances at various levels,” she said.

She said her experiences as a dancing mistress and with DeLancey’s Brigade is a great way to learn about history. “I have learned more from the dances, music, and novels than from philosophers or history books,” she said.

Participants in dance workshops are dancing from the beginning, she said. “I teach the steps as you dance, and you are immediately applying what you learn. If you go to dances in the area, English country or contra, they are alcohol and smoke-free. It’s hard to drink and do steps and figures.

“I love the dancing so much, I want to share it,” Ms Campbell said. “I love doing it with the kids. There is the chance they will come back to it later. It is good wholesome, healthy fun.”