Folkdance

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The Swarthmore Folkdance Club claims to be one of the oldest College institutions, second only to the Phoenix. According to their records, they've been around since at least the 40's, probably much longer, and over the years have done longsword, rapper, morris, and international dancing, in addition to their current English, Scottish, and Contra.

The Club currently meets twice a week in the Community Center on Harvard Avenue, after a nasty tussle with the dance department a few years ago over whether its dance classes could be held in on-campus classrooms. English and Contra dances are on Thursdays from 7:30 to 9:00, Scottish dances are on Tuesdays at the same time. They also run the English-Scottish ball every spring, and an all-campus Contra every semester or so. Anyone who is interested is also welcome to play music for the classes.

Folkdance had previously made excursions to nearby dances, including the Playford Ball and the Arden Contra. Starting in the spring of 2006 these began to be organized more regularly and expanded to include Glenside, Elverson, Lambertville, and NEFFA. These excursions tended to be almost entirely SWIL and para-SWIL.

SWILfolk have a long history of involvement in folkdance, going back to the very beginning, when the folkdance club allegedly began the Pterodactyl Hunt as a joke. It has been observed by one of Folkdance Club's leaders (Jenny Beer) that, in dance communities in general, when one or two people from a close-knit organization like SWIL join a dance community, they often pull in many of their friends. This could serve to explain part of the high crossover membership between Folkdance and SWIL, though obviously once SWILfolk discover Folkdance, they stick with it not only because their friends are there, but also because it's fun. At least once, the positions of SWIL Co-president and Folkdance coordinator/emailer (there wasn't really a president per-se) were held by the same person.

Swarthmore's Folkdance Club has also periodically had strong ties with the Bi-Co Scottish Dance group (which officially dances exclusively Scottish Country Dancing, except for an annual crash course in English Country Dancing before the English-Scottish Ball), with members from each club attending the others' classes and generally joining each others' social circles. The ongoing presence and friendships of alumni from the three schools continues to contribute to this commaraderie. Incidentally, Bi-Co's Scottish Dance membership has for many years overlapped heavily with Bi-Co's SWIL-counterpart, DoubleStar.

  • Swarthmore College Folkdance Club website (http://www.sccs.swarthmore.edu/org/folkdance)
  • Swat folkdance history page (http://www.sccs.swarthmore.edu/org/folkdance/hist/chron.html). Note that, if you have lore to contribute to this page, you can email it to the folkdance webmaster, whose address should be listed in the left section of the page, and is currently thuronyi@sccs.
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