Photos Provided Folk dancers Daniel Holpp of Glendale, middle left, and Zach Gordon of Wheeling, middle right, circle so quickly that their partners can “fly.” Katie Guthrie of Bellaire, far left, and Leandra Hostetler of Bellaire, far right, are wearing red boots designating their training to do this level of performance.

WHEELING — Real folk dancing is to the watered-down version readers might have clomped through in gym class as Michael Jordan is to the granny shot. At its most exciting, it’s about the hang time — something that at least the younger members of the Ohio Valley Folk Society clearly have.

During performances such as their recent one at the Rathskeller part of Oglebay Festival, dancers routinely did court-worthy vertical leaps. Other times, they were “flying.” For these numbers, young women wearing red boots that denoted their training for such performance locked arms with male partners who spun at sufficient speed to keep them airborne.

Add in dances like a schuhplattler that had participants staying on the ground just long enough to whack hammers against a whopping-big anvil — and still others that allowed performers to yell like they meant it — and society director Valleri Gordon said it’s no wonder folk dancing is still a part of Wheeling culture 80-some years after Wisconsin-import Jane Farwell made it a thing.

LONG HISTORY

Long before any of the younger dancers (and, quite possibly, their grandparents) were born, Farwell had locals and visitors spending whole weekends of the 1940s at Oglebay Park’s Camp Russell in order to learn traditional folk dances.

Oglebay Institute records suggest Farwell — the institute’s first international folk dance director and a national-level founder of a folk-dancing movement — was also a youth magnet in the mid-century. Teens came out in droves to learn such dances as Here Comes Sally Down the Alley and Pig in the Parlor.

For Farwell, the camps and the permanent Folklore Village she later developed in her birth state were about appreciating tradition and maintaining a commitment to rural living, according to Wikipedia. Wheeling’s Gordon, who came to folk dancing when her children took classes from then Oglebay Institute dance instructor Bob Tomlinson about 20 years ago, said she gets that even though she’s planted in the 2020s.

“The term ‘folk’ in our name simply refers to the nature of the music and dancing that we try to promote and preserve,” Gordon said of the private dance group she founded after the institute’s connection to the folkway ebbed. “That nature is in the music and the dancing of the ‘common people’ – the farmers, and the sailors, the housewives.”

RESEARCH &

ROMANCE

Ironically, Gordon’s own connection to folk dance came through a bit of literary research. At the time, the resident of the Elm Grove neighborhood was homeschooling her children.

“A friend in our homeschooling support group suggested we put together a book study for all the high school-aged students in the group to learn about Jane Austen’s ‘Pride and Prejudice’ and the culture of that time period,” Gordon explained.

The group decided to incorporate some Regency-era dancing into the study and enlisted the help of Tomlinson, whom they discovered was also proficient in English country dance.

“The 10 or so homeschooling students we had took a six-week course … from Bob, which prepared them for a Regency evening,” Gordon said. Students dressed in Regency costumes, danced Regency dances, ate Regency foods and even played a few era-appropriate parlor games.

The students were hooked, she said, and so was Gordon. She noted some of the families were taking so many classes from Tomlinson at one point they were dancing five or six nights a week.

“During those years, I enjoyed learning a lot of dances and slowly tried my hand at teaching and ‘calling’ dances,” Gordon said of moving from observer to participant to leader.

She’s done such stuff long enough, in fact, she realized during the recent Oglebay performance that some of the teen and young adult dancers were participating as tiny children when she started.

Having watched them grow up on various dance floors, she said she can’t help but smile when she sees a young man start seeking out a certain young lady for dance after dance — in the way of a Jane Austen novel.

“There’s always some romance,” Gordon said, noting the nature of the group dances with multiple partner changes allows plenty of room for singles, too. She also pointed out that the variety of dances also makes room for participants who might be well past their leaping and “flying” days.

STEPPING ALONG

Gordon hopes her twist on Wheeling’s folk dance continuum will step along. The Ohio Valley Folk Society has weekly classes for dancers of all ages at rented locations in the Wheeling and Steubenville areas.

And, in addition to performing at venues including Oglebay Festival and Fort Henry Days, the group also gets together for themed dances that do not involve lederhosen or dirndls.

Two upcoming dances include a sock hop in late October that will feature American folk dances popular in the 1940s and 1950s and the group’s semi-formal Twelfth Night Ball. The latter dance, which wraps up the Christmas season, focuses on English country dances and international folk dances.

Interested readers can visit the Ohio Valley Folk Society page on Facebook.