Square, line dance club represents MC at national convention

When you read this, several of Mountain City's square and line dancers will be over a thousand miles away, showing their stuff in Waco, Texas, at the National Square Dance Convention. The Young at Heart Square and Line Dance Club, which recently attained a 501 (c) (3) nonprofit designation, is taking part in the national convention as a club for the first time. The club's president, Marianne Lenta, previously explained they were selected for the national convention because of their "high energy and choreography." The first day of the trip, the club made it to Bossier City, Louisiana. The second day saw the group cross into Texas, where they planned to stop and take a picture with the "Welcome to Texas" sign, but Lenta said it was way too hot and humid. That night, the group got to Houston, where Joshua Ransom was the featured caller at H-Town Squares, a Youth and Young Adult Club. Around 160 people attended. Saturday, the group went to Waco, Texas, for the 75th National Square Dance Convention, which runs from June 24-27. "We would like to give recognition to the United Square Dancers of America who have provided a wonderful grant that has made this trip possible for three of our young club members," Lenta said while on the trip, previously noting that housing is typically the most expensive part of these trips. The national convention features "multiple levels of dancing in all kinds of different rooms." "They'll have basic square dance, mainstream square dance, plus advanced," Lenta said of the convention. "They have line dancing, contra dancing, round dancing, I even think they have clogging there." The convention is "four days of dancing," Lenta said, where there are no classes or anything of the sort. Every style of dancing present will have its own space. Lenta's goal is to dance to different callers from all over the world. There will be callers from all over the world, including Japan, Germany, Australia and New Zealand. One feature of line dancing is that the calls are made in English, regardless of where in the world or what the primary language is. "You can go to any country in the world and you can go to a modern western square dance, because it's always called in English," Lenta said. "Where you might have a problem is understanding the accent." After returning to Mountain City, the club will continue to have events and classes. A community line dance workshop starts July 10, running every Friday from 7-9 p.m., will be $5 for "two hours of line dancing," Lenta said. Then on Aug. 21, there will be a community line dance from 7-9 p.m. at Doe Valley Farms. Sept. 18 will have what Lenta called "a high voltage community hoedown," also at Doe Valley Farms from 6-8:30 p.m. The whole community is invited and will feature "basic beginner calls of square dancing and we'll probably do some line dancing also." The hoedown will lead into a new class, Beginners Modern Western Square Dance, starting on Sept. 21. That class runs every Monday throughout the winter. The classes are taught from September to March or April at the United Methodist Church at 128 North Church St., Mountain City.