Dawn

Memorial Day weekend affords the opportunity for contradancers in New England to attend the Dawn Dance, held in Brattleboro, VT. As mentioned in a previous post, I've never been, and have been pretty happy to know I'd get to do just that.
Richard and I met our friend Jim and traveled together, making the journey in about 4 hours of actual travel time, not including stops for coffee, fuel and water. We thought we'd find a place in Greenfield, MA for dinner, but nothing caught our eye so we continued on and ended up eating at the Co-Op in Brattleboro. The Co-Op is really nice... lots of yummy foods and household products in the store... with a great deli/self-serve restaurant. The food of the day was chicken (or tofu), spicy vegetables, greens, brown rice.
The dance is held in a town recreation hall/ gymnasium so there was a lot of room for dancers, and a nice stage for the musicians and caller. Vendors occupied some of the smaller spaces with clothing, food, t-shirts, etc. We got to hear great music, great calling, see many familiar faces, and do some great dances (contras, squares, waltzes, hambo, etc).
The dance goes until 7:00 am, but by a unanimous three-way concensus before we left Maine, we knew we were not committed to staying the full time. Many people who attend this event will go out and sleep in their vehicle, although there are some hardy souls who manage to tough it out and dance ALL NIGHT. We are content with the knowledge that we COULD do it if we WANTED to! So, we left around 2:00 am, taking turns driving and sleeping (no one doing both simultaneously). Check out the web site for photos of previous dances, and information about bands and callers.
Though we haven't had a lot of energy today, we certainly recognize that we're doing better than we would had we gotten NO sleep at all. As it turns out, we've worked in the garden, got a little more done on the workshop, and spent a good amount of quality family time together here at home. SK's friend Sienna helped round out our little group at the lunch table today, easily joining in the conversations and then making the trip into the village for Tubby's ice cream and a walk around the mill pond before all three young adults headed out for other parts. Richard and I took their departure as a sure sign that it was time for us to take a much needed nap!
Dawn comes from the Portland Collection, Volume Two (the green book).