JUST PLAIN FOLK : Dancing Skills and a Sense of Community Develop in a Circle (or Square or Line) of Friends

Bill Evans’ eyes glazed over every week for months. The folk dance lessons weren’t so easy after all.

But now he has joined scores of other folk dancers across Orange County who have developed a zeal that often borders on fanaticism.

“I live five minutes away,” Evans said recently at the Fullerton park where he dances, “and I chose that apartment because it was close to here.”

Like fancy underwear, there’s a different folk dance class in the county for each night of the week. But whether it’s Scottish or Cajun, square or Scandinavian dance they prefer, local practitioners share an all-too-rare sense of community, a passion for good, sober fun and highly developed calf muscles.

“It’s great exercise,” said Chino psychotherapist Anne Swanson Brown, beads of sweat dotting her forehead during a recent Israeli dance lesson in Costa Mesa.

Brown’s classmate David Friedman, a Mission Viejo attorney, said: “I come for the physical (benefits) but also for the mental. For three or four hours, I forget all my problems, and I’m in another world where it’s only music and good times.”

Times haven’t always been good for many forms of folk dance, which lack the popularity they had during their counterculture heyday of 20 or 30 years ago, said Robert Altman, president of Orange County Folkdancers.

As the idea of “making your own fun” became increasingly foreign to Americans, Altman said, folk dance clubs moved off college campuses into the private sector. And that, Altman said, meant vastly fewer young people being recruited and an increase in dancers’ average age.

The proliferation of aerobics, martial arts, VCRs and competition from such popular music and dance forms as country didn’t help either, according to folk aficionados.

So beginning this Friday, to drum up renewed interest, the Laguna Folkdancers group will offer its first introduction to international folk dance class at its 24th annual festival, a three-day event.

One of the area’s major folk celebrations, the festival typically attracts about 400 enthusiasts from throughout Southern California, who come for workshops with local and noted visiting teachers, performances by local troupes and dance parties.

Meanwhile, several county groups are holding steady or going stronger than ever:

INTERNATIONAL FOLK DANCE

Orange County Folkdancers, Laguna Folkdancers and Veselo Selo Folkdancers all practice international folk dance, which, de spite the name, focuses on traditional cultures of Balkan and central European countries, parts of Russia and areas around the eastern Mediterranean Sea.

Dances may be easy, involving little more than walking and low kicks and hops, or intricate, brain-taxing endurance tests. There are solos, couple dances and group line dances, similar to country line dances except that participants hold each others’ hands or grasp shoulders or belts.

Roughly 20 Laguna Folkdancers performed a Macedonian Lesnoto, clasping hands for the simple, lyrical line dance at a recent Sunday gathering. Wearing the soft, pointy-toed opanke sandal common among folk dancers, many hummed along to a soulful tune.

One participant candidly assessed the evening’s crowd, made up of 30- and 40-year-olds, as a bunch of fogies doing walking-around dances.”

But, “a lot of young people are involved,” countered Michelle Sandler, 37, a 16-year folk dance veteran. “And if anyone wants to do more vigorous dances, they can request them.”

Added Steve Himel, a Newport Beach computer programmer, “I like the variety that international folk dance offers.”

SQUARE DANCE

Considered one of America’s own folk dances, square dancing is thriving here, due to such active organizations as Shirts ‘N Skirts, turning 35 this year.

Its members hugging and chatting before a recent class, the group’s palpable sense of community is emblematic of the local folk dance scene, where dancers take trips and celebrate birthdays, anniversaries and holidays en masse, and old-timers take pains to make newcomers feel welcome.

“You’re working as a team with seven or eight people, so you depend on each other,” said Dave Rensberger, a Shirts ‘N Skirts dance caller. “And it’s the whole spectrum of society; nobody cares what you do outside of square dancing.”

Shirts ‘N Skirts dances, held at Santa Ana’s Ebell clubhouse, are a step back in time: The spitting image of the decals seen on many an RV, these beaming petticoated ladies and bolo-tied gents do-si-do and promenade to Rensberger’s singsong calls: “Circle to the right left with a yak yak yak, dance up to the middle with a whoop and a holler.”

Still, today’s square dancing has evolved from its English and French roots into a more complex art with hundreds of movements and patterns. Lessons are mandatory. Shirts ‘N Skirts’ next 10-month session for beginners will start in January.

While dancers range from age 13 to eightysomething, the average Shirks ‘N Skirts member is 40, and women tend to outnumber men. Cornering a visiting reporter, Cathy McLeod of Newport Beach worked to amend that.

“Tell all the guys in town,” said McLeod, a vision in pink, “if they want to meet some really nice gals, and pretty ones too, they should come to the Ebell club. And tell them to bring a guy with them.”

“The best thing about square dancing is that there’s no drinking,” offered Peg Bogard, a Huntington Beach businesswoman. “It’s not a written rule, but if you’re drinking, you’re not thinking, which would screw up three other couples.”

SCOTTISH

Wanna-be folk dancers may be lured to this brand just by the names of its jigs: Sandy O’er the Lea, Misses Cramb of Linlithgow, Jessie’s Hornpipe, Dashing White Sergeant, Sugar Candie, De’il Amang the Tailors.

The curious should have a taste for refinement too. Scottish dance, with its origin in the royal French court, demands precise lower-leg articulation, proper deportment and “has all the etiquette of polite society of a day gone by,” said instructor Bob Patterson.

“You escort your partner off the floor,” said Patterson, who teaches at the Edison Community Center in Huntington Beach. “You don’t slump.”

Even, however, while striving to keep toes pointed and heels elevated, students at a recent class seemed to be having no less fun than that De’il Amang the Tailors.

“The music is upbeat, and people have a good time,” said Linda Boucher, a retired art teacher. “It’s a real mental challenge because there are so many different combinations of steps, but you end up feeling like you’ve really accomplished something.”

ROUND DANCING

The lack of a major mental challenge is the allure of Round Dancing, named after dancers’ circular progression around the room.

The “lazy-man’s ballroom,” its followers perform simplified versions of the waltz, tango, swing, fox trot, samba and other social dances, said Harmon Jorritsma, who teaches with his wife, Betty, in Orange and Anaheim.

“We dance for enjoyment and fun,” Jorritsma said, “and we have our own rules, but they aren’t very strict.”

Additionally, a caller cues each new move so that men don’t have to choreograph on their feet, a ballroom must.

“It’s so great to be able to dance and not have to make anything up,” said round dancer John Guerin, 63, as couples swirled slowly by during Jorritsma’s recent Anaheim session. Most of the swirlers were were in their 70s and 80s; some have been at it for more than a quarter-century.

“We’re celebrating a 60th wedding anniversary tonight,” said Betty Jorritsma, whose class numbered about 100 recently. “I send birthday cards to everyone too.”

ISRAELI

Slapping the ground, skipping, whistling, whooping and raising their hands skyward to God, Israeli dancers at a recent Costa Mesa class hardly paused for breath between songs.

“ Yassou! “ one called out. “ Opa! “ called another.

Some of the dances Yoni Carr teaches every Wednesday night are old classics. There’s erev ba , a circle dance like the hora, and bat yiftch , a couples dance.

Some, on the other hand, are brand-new.

“We get the latest dances from Israel by fax,” said Uri Hazan. “I’m not kidding!”

Swanson Brown, 36, drives 40 minutes each way to attend Carr’s group. She prefers it over those that have more of a “night club” atmosphere, which has “broken up a lot of marriages,” she said.

“They turn down the lights and have a lot more couple dances.”

“We get people from San Diego, Pomona, wherever,” Friedman said. “Sometimes we have up to 100.”

SCANDINAVIAN

Warning: Couple-dance phobics, don’t apply. Scandinavian dancers don’t whirl arm-in-arm around the floor. They whirl bear-hug around the floor.

“It’s not because Scandinavians are friendlier, more affectionate people,” explained Donna Tripp, who teaches dances of Norway, Sweden, Denmark and Finland with Ted Martin in Anaheim for the 30-year-old Skandia Dance Club.

But the Swedish polska hold is used, Tripp said, because couples execute different steps, while, like the Earth around the sun, they’re rotating as one unit and circling the room. If not exactly a bear hug, it’s a much more intimate coupling position than typically seen.

“It gives a very firm position in regard to the partner and allows for closer contact and better centering of the dance,” she said.

Tripps’ students learn mostly traditional Scandinavian forms of waltz, schottische, polka and other couple dances that involve walking and turning, with lots of variations on that theme.

Amy Dale likes the challenge. “It looks deceptively simple,” she said, “but it’s not.”

Like just about every folk group around the county, this one functions, even if not by design, as a singles group, with plenty of happy endings.

“We’ve had probably 10 or 12 marriages grow out of this” group, said Tripp, who has spent most of her life in dance, whether ballet or folk, and likes to quote that like-minded comic strip canine.

“As Snoopy says, ‘To live is to dance, and to dance is to live.’ ”

* FESTIVALS & EVENTS, Page XX

What: Laguna Folkdancers Festival, with workshops, dance parties and performances by local folk troupes.

When: Friday, Feb. 11, at 7:30 p.m., through Sunday, Feb. 13, at 5:30 p.m. Free introduction to folk dancing Sunday at noon in school cafeteria; performance by local folk troupes Sunday at 1:30 p.m.

Where: Ensign Intermediate School gymnasium, 2000 Cliff Drive, Newport Beach.

Whereabouts: Corona del Mar (73) Freeway south to Irvine Avenue. Go south on Irvine Avenue, then turn left on Cliff Drive.

Wherewithal: Admission to the entire three-day festival is $33 at the door, or individual events range from $6 to $9.

Where to call: (714) 533-8667 or (714) 545-1957.