A wholesome evening out

[lauradi7dw]

Lexington was part of Cambridge until 1713. People have been gearing up for the 300th for a couple of years, and the first wave of festivities was yesterday. We skipped most of them, doing our usual Saturday things instead of opening ceremonies, the huge photo op at the track, and the scavenger hunt, but I was determined to go to the dance evening held in the high school gym. It was publicized as a sequence, I thought, with early New England dances (contras, circle dances, some other stuff), then jump to swing, both with live music, then changing gears to a DJ starting with music from the 1950s up through the present. When we got there at about 6:45, there was already a massive contra-like thing happening in the gym, and the swing dance was in a smaller room down the hall. The early hour and the cheap admission meant that there were lots of children - small ones with parents, middle school and high school kids in packs. Most seemed game to learn new things, and the non-dancers seemed happy to be wandering the halls of the high school together. A lot of the little girls, especially, were dressed in what I expect they thought to be the most suitable outfit for going to a dance, which in practice ranged from a girl with a striped dress and totally different colored striped tights to one with a hand-smocked dress that could have been party wear for almost any time in the past 60 years. The boys in general were more jeans and t-shirts, but we saw a pre-school boy wearing a black suit and tie. There were a few adults in colonial re-enactor duds. The DJ was supposed to start at 8, but the contra caller had decided to start a Grand March* for about 200 people just before that, so the recorded music started late. I don't think most people minded, with the possible exception of the woman who turned up very sharply dressed for an evening out, including spike high heels (on a gym floor!). She & her partner clearly felt that they were in the wrong place. Surveying the crowd, the DJ skipped most of the rest of the 20th century and went for middle school dance party music (not quite the macarena or the cha-cha slide, but something like that). We left at about that point, and got home in plenty of time for Dr Who.
* only sort of like this
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KcxFnGZhvL8