Contra Dance Nevada County (Grass Valley)

The ballroom floor in the Grass Valley Elks Lodge gives a little underfoot. It is a sprung floor, which the dance group’s website describes as “springy, but with a solid floor still there.” According to Elks events coordinator Kathy Madeiros, it is the oldest sprung floor west of the Mississippi. The Lodge stands at 109 South School Street, at the corner of West Main, across from the Center for the Arts in downtown Grass Valley.

On most third Saturdays of the month, Contra Dance Nevada County holds a dance there from 7 to 10 p.m. It is a small, volunteer-run nonprofit serving the foothills of Nevada and Placer counties. The group says it favors the floor “because it is kinder to your knees, feet, etc.,” and adds: “Don’t worry, you will not be catapulted into space, just launched into Contra Nirvana!”

Lesson, walk-through, waltz

Doors open at 6:30, and an introduction and lesson follow at 6:40. A 2025 notice in The Union put the optional instruction at 6:45. The group calls contra a folk dance with European roots and American flair, danced to live Celtic-inspired music from New England, Appalachia and beyond. It likens contra to a blend of English country, square and swing dancing.

Every figure is called. The caller first walks the dancers through it, then calls during most of the dance. No partner is needed, and partners usually change with each dance. The website puts the footwork plainly: “Walking/stepping/twirling in time with the music is 87.5% of it.”

The caller and the band change every month. The 2025 notice said both rotate but are usually based locally. That notice also listed a waltz before the intermission and another as the final dance, and it reported dancers aged 12 to 88 at the previous month’s dance. At halftime there is a potluck snack, which the dancers bring, along with their own water.

Children are welcome at the lesson and are “often really good at it,” the group says. Those under 10 must be supervised: “It is very dangerous to have small people running underfoot while trying to complete a full ‘hey’ or right-left-through!” Admission runs from $5 for children to $15 for adults over 21, and no one is turned away for lack of funds. The door fee, donations and, in the group’s words, “our pockets” pay for the hall, insurance, bands, callers and supplies.

Clothing is anything that moves: shorts and tee shirts, simple skirts and blouses, kilts. Shoes matter more. Many figures pivot on the foot, so the group advises soles with some slip. Experienced dancers often move to leather- or suede-soled ballroom shoes, while beginners generally keep to street shoes. High heels are not recommended, and no shoe should mark the floor.

Some months the dance moves off that floor. The dance of October 17, 2026, is set for the Golden Empire Grange at 11363 Grange Court, off La Barr Meadows Road, with parking in the lot. Celia Ramsay calls and Full Tilt plays. On November 21, 2026, the dance returns to the Elks. Mike Fynan calls to the Community Band of the Foothills, a local open band that practices twice monthly in Grass Valley and plays a couple of dances a year.

Foothill Country Dancers

The group traces itself to the Foothill Country Dancers, formed in the early 1990s. That group produced hundreds of Saturday-evening dances in Nevada City, Grass Valley, Auburn and Newcastle.

In January 2005, The Union announced one of its dances at the Odd Fellows Hall, 212 Spring Street in Nevada City, held the first Saturday of every month. Beginners came around 7:30 for instruction and dancing started at 8. The band was Hot Cider, the caller was Paul Moore, “who has national experience,” and the door was $8. About 60 people normally came, organizers said, with children as young as 8 doing well.

“Contra dancing has the romantic potential of ballroom, the energy of jazzercize, the traditional community feel of folk dance, and the creative possibilities of freestyle and contact improv,” the long-time dancer Eric Engels told the paper. He had been dancing 24 years: “There are no steps to learn; you mostly just walk and dance with your upper body. At the same time, there’s enough complexity and nuance to keep you learning forever.”

Barry Angell of Grass Valley had been dancing more than 10 years by then and was later thanked as one of the group’s house musicians. He put it shorter: “It’s easy. You have a caller telling you what to do, and you have different partners all the time. It’s all about having fun.”

From 1998 through 2013, the group also produced Fall Has Sprung, an annual 12-hour contra dance. Each year it drew as many as 250 dancers from all over California and nearby states. Its originators were Lonna Whipple, also a house musician, and Jamie Lynne.

Halted in 2020, dissolved in 2023, back by 2024

The dances were halted early in 2020. Eighteen volunteers offered to help whenever they could start back up.

On February 10, 2023, the Sacramento Country Dance Society posted, with permission, an email from the Foothill board: “the long-awaited return of the Nevada City contradance is not to be.” The board had voted to dissolve and was distributing its modest assets to other nonprofits. “The very short version is that we cannot under the current circumstances both recruit a new generation of leaders and managers and rebuild our dancer base,” it wrote. It noted that the organizations sponsoring dances in Chico and Reno had also closed down.

The letter thanked founders, musicians, callers and volunteers by name. One was Susan Murphy, a founder and early board member who was also one of the regular local callers. The letter looked back on “nearly 30 years” of work and left one opening: an existing local organization had “expressed some interest in holding contradances in the future.”

By March 2025, Contra Dance Nevada County wrote in The Union that it had been a year since the group got back on the dance floor post-pandemic, and 35 years since the original group formed. For that St. Patrick’s month dance it booked a nationally touring duo, Raven & Goose: violinist Corwin Zekley and pianist Grace Fellows. Talib Huff called, with 30 years of calling contra dances, mostly in Sacramento.

The same notice gave contra a California past older than the Foothill group. In the Rancho Period, 1825 to 1850, social events called fandangos usually started with a “contradanza.” It was a long-lines couples dance descended from French minuets and British country dances, popular in hacienda culture as far north as today’s Sonoma County. The notice also credits “some ‘green’ from Henry Ford” in the 1920s.

A lodge that nearly closed

The Elks lodge that owns the ballroom was formed in 1900 by the business community of Grass Valley. Its building was built in 1912 and dedicated in 1913.

By 2016 it was close to the end. That spring The Union found Ed Bourne, 93, pounding the pavement for the lodge. He had sold four $50 business-card ads for its newsletter in recent weeks. “In the early ‘90s, when I joined, we had more than 500 members,” he said. “Last I heard, we have 122.”

Utilities and repairs on the building cost more than $100,000 a year, nearly $400 a day. “Last month, we came close to voting to dissolve our chapter,” said Exalted Ruler Andy Gonzales, who said he had twice been Western States 100-Mile World Champion, in 1977 and 1978. Above the lodge, eight rooms were rented for a nominal fee to homeless people referred by Hospitality House. Bourne’s plan included “more events such as dinners and dances that raise funds for the lodge.”

In April 2025, a month after the St. Patrick’s dance, the Lodge was designated a Nevada County Historical Landmark.