Contra Indicators

Learning from our mistakes

By Max Alexander

If life is a series of lessons learned from mistakes, I should at this point rank highly as a dancer with the Bolshoi troupe. Yet although I have been stumbling across dance floors since before Baryshnikov defected, I am forever trying to keep up with graceful women as the band plays cruelly on. The first was my mother, herself a dance teacher; but for nearly two decades the feet I have most often stepped on belong to my wife Sarah — who as a musician, singer, and former actress knows her way around a waltz, not to mention the mashed potato.

Actually it was an excess of mashed potatoes on Thanksgiving that led us to a contradance the following night at the rectory of St. Denis church in North Whitefield. A contradance (the word is a variant of the French contredanse) is basically a line dance where partners face each other; but the choreography is endlessly mutable and dictated (literally) by a caller, who organizes the proceedings and makes sure that everybody dances with everybody else. The music can range from Cajun (in Louisiana) to old-time bluegrass and even Dixieland. Some friends who call themselves the Muddy Road String Band were playing at this dance, and we needed some exercise. And Sarah’s sister, a contradance devotee, was goading us on. When we swung into the icy parking lot at 9, the band was already playing. We ducked in, tossed some bills into the untended cardboard cash box near the door, and peeled off our sweaters.

Despite its French name, St. Denis is an Irish congregation known for its community spirit. Unlike the coastal Catholic churches, which swell on summer Sundays, St. Denis serves a year-round rural community in central Maine. It’s what the rappers would call a 24-7 operation, and on this frigid Friday night the joint was hoppin’.

I can’t say how many of the several dozen dancers were St. Denis parishioners — some of the older folks no doubt, but probably not the dreadlocked student in Army fatigues and bare feet, or the tie-died Deadhead couple doing those annoying wavy leg kicks. (Hey, even I could do that.) They’d all be dancing with each other soon enough.

The musicians flashed smiles as we walked in: guitarist Toki Oshima, who is also a graphic artist, and her husband John Pranio, who plays fiddle. The pianist and banjo man, John Gawler, hosts a bluegrass festival most summers at his farm on Buttermilk Hill. By day a sheet metal fabricator, he restored the antique copper sink in our pantry. Behind him on the wall was a framed photo of Pope John Paul. Under the Pontiff were pictures of Maine monsignors, bishops and nuns of note — most looking even sterner than Sister Madonna, the first-grade teacher who informed me within the space of two weeks that the President was killed and there was no Santa Claus.

The music surged as the dancers bowed and circled artfully. These were hardcore contra fans, and they acted as if everyone in America did this on Friday night. Sometimes life in rural Maine is so special that it feels like the Hollywood version of rural Maine. This would be the contradance where Julia Roberts (who has fallen in love with a local farmer) do-si-dos with the curmudgeonly village patriarch and screws up the dance in a wacky way that wins the hearts of all. In real life, screwing up the dance just makes you feel kinda dumb, as Sarah and I found out.

Contradances should be great for leadfoots like myself because the caller barks out the moves over the music. But in practice, it can get pretty confusing: “Okay men swing your neighbor’s partner one and a half times now do-si-do across to the right now you’re left of your partner take three steps in and stomp back and over again with a reverse out hands up and now down to the next...” My head was spinning, which I don’t believe was one of the moves called for. This was clearly an advanced dance, and we were out of our league.

Then we reached the end of the line, where we truly ran out of clues. Do we walk around to the front? Stand here like dopes? Dance with ourselves? Wait for the song to end? What should we do?

We defected.

If only we could step away from our farmhouse so easily. The past few weeks have found us torn with indecision over our home, which despite major renovations is still too far from the school, too far from the store, too big in some ways and too little in others. Yet we both know that there is no decision to make. This is where we are. Sometimes you get the chance to learn from your mistakes, but most often what you learn is how to live with them. We may rent an apartment in town if money allows, but this farm is our home.

And it’s a beautiful home, on the crest of a rise — a classic Greek Revival from the mid-19th century, the first time that Americans sought to express ideas in their architecture. Before then, American homes were about the hearth, concerned above all with how to stay warm and comfortable; the inside is what mattered. The Greek Revival movement (which came from England) was instead about the outside — the public face of a building. It celebrated the idea of democracy, and in young America it was an architecture of optimism.

We hope that spirit rubs off on us. There’s the barn to build, the land to clear, the trees to tap. And next month there’s another contradance at St. Denis. This one’s a family dance — beginners welcome.

Max Alexander lives in Washington, Maine. He can be reached at malex@midcoast.com.