In the beginning of 2024 the leadership of Old Dominion Dance decided to make the goal of visiting all the local folk dance groups, to experience new types of dance, to make connections, and to just have fun dancing at events where we don’t have to do any work. You can read last year’s review here. This year the rest of OldDD’s leadership started chickening out and couldn’t make as many of the group meet-ups as last year. But once again here is my(Emily’s) honest review of the groups that I visited in 2025. I am listing these groups in the order that we visited them, not alphabetically. All meeting times and locations were the same as last year. As with last year it has been a joy to see the various leaders of these groups and how knowledgeable they are in folk dance. I aspire to be that knowledgeable someday.

German – Tuesday evenings. German was much the same as last year except director Orest was away traveling and I had a horrible sinus infection. There seemed to be more children than last year. Some people remembered us from last year and some didn’t. Members were welcoming but I felt miserable so didn’t stay long.

International was next – Sunday afternoons, UNO campus. This group was also much the same as last year- about ten people, probably ages 60+. For the first few dances director Catherine told us the steps beforehand, but after that it’s all just jump in and watch the footwork to try and copy steps. That’s fun a few times, but not for long. Everyone there has been attending long enough they basically have the dances memorized. Which of course is a lot of fun once you get to that level, and I love dancing ECD there for that reason. The bossy people are still there; so are the nice people. People are still very puzzled as to why we are visiting and our dance group history. I tested this group out on my family this year; it was fun to go as a family, but the dances were a bit intimidating for my kids. I think one would have to be very committed to attending regularly to be able to reach an enjoyable level of ability for these dances. Maybe it would help if we had known the difficulty level of each dance before starting; for example, if I had known that a dance had five steps instead of ten, I would maybe have been more likely to jump in. As it was, the dances were all Greek to me!

Square dance, Sunday evenings at 6:30pm, Northwest Hills church. This was my first time trying out square dancing. Many of the calls and steps were similar to ECD so I feel that it was easy to pick up and jump right in. Some of the dances were sung, and that gave a quicker tempo, but otherwise square dancing seemed less athletic than contra. The sung calls did go the way of country songs, ie generally involving some kind of romance. Apparently there are five square dance “Clubs” in the Omaha area. There were about ten people in this club, and probably eight of them were over the age of 60, along with two very nice young gentlemen. We tried to do a country dance, but most of these dancers had only been doing square dance for way longer than I’ve been alive, and it was too hard for them to switch to something new. I asked why the clubs don’t join together to make a larger group, and they said they enjoy having multiple places to dance every week. In fact, they enjoy it so much that no one is available to come teach a square dance at our Joint Chiefs of dance in April- because one of their clubs meets every Friday. I guess all I can say about that is, that’s true dedication. I had heard that square dancing was more formalized, which kept me from attending one in the past. The club network itself does seem very organized, with a large national group and very clear levels of caller and dancer ability. But the dancing itself, at least in my experience here, isn’t that formal. It was really just social folk dance by another name.

Scandinavian, Tuesday evenings. This year is the first time I’ve tested any of these groups on my kids, and Scandinavian wins the gold star for most child-friendly. They only dance for an hour, and they have plenty of simple dances easy for kids. It’s a smaller group and very friendly. Leaders Craig and Kate are good examples in that they are used to dancing with their own kids. This dance evening would be a great place for a family to go for a relaxing evening out.

I again contacted the Lithuanian, Greek, and Italian groups. Lithuanian said we could come watch them at the Christmas festival at the Durham- sorry, I’m not paying for that. Greek was at an out-of-state competition at the time I emailed them and I didn’t reach out again. Italian would really like to have someone volunteer to start teaching folk dance again and I hope they find someone to carry on that folk dance tradition! I am sorry to report that the Scottish Country Dance group is closing as of April 2025.

I think one thing that struck me this year’s tour is the difference between people who love folk dancing, and people who love their folk dance group. Various people in each of these groups are confused as to who we(OldDD) are, have no concept of folk dance outside of their own group, can’t accurately assess the dance experience level of visitors, and have no interest in collaboration with groups outside of their own. I addressed this briefly in last year’s review- local folk dance groups seem very insulated, and in general they are not curious. That’s not BAD, but if we’re talking about helping smaller groups survive and passing on traditions, isolation will not allow that to happen. I’ve said before, I don’t want this large body of folk dance knowledge to die out. Caveat, I do understand that people rarely have time to commit to more than one hobby group. That’s not what I am suggesting here. There’s a reason I only tour once a year, and it’s only one visit to each of the five groups. That’s do-able. 

When it comes to ECD my glasses are very rose-colored and I’m totally biased, because I think my group is amazing and I love it. ECD is my first folk dance love and will always be my favorite, and my priority. So when I visit these groups and especially when I ask them to come meet our dancers and maybe teach a dance to our crowd, and they are not interested, I can get a little huffy. I feel like I am offering up the gold standard of folk dance: a room full of families and in particular, young people who love folk dance- on a silver platter; and people don’t seem too excited about it. 

So I think I need to communicate better. Keep visiting each group annually, keep inviting group leaders to teach at our joint event, and start asking questions. One reason for an annual tour of groups is to channel my own goal for longevity and good change. I want to form a basis for ongoing analyzation of local groups. I want to have a willingness to learn from older groups, and figure out how to use them as the knowledgeable resources that they are. As we finish up this year’s tour and look forward to next year’s, I want to start thinking of questions to ask these group leaders. Such as, where do you see your group in five to ten years? What would you most like to pass on the next generation? 

Do you have any questions for our local folk dance groups? I would love to hear your suggestions!