"The most popular single dance was THE SALTY DOG RAG, a partner dance done to music sung by Rod Foley (Pat Boone's father-in-law) which featured fiddle music and a hokey country melody and words ("Way down South in the state of Arkansaw, Where your great grandpa met your great grandma, They dance to the music and they get on a jag, And dance all night to the Salty Dog Rag..."). Other popular dances included MAYIM, an Israeli circle dance traditionally taught in the early 60's to all Freshmen during Orientation activies, along with MISERLOU, a Greek link dance.
U.S. Congresswoman Eleanor Holmes Norton, '60, recalls Antioch folk dancing done in the late 1950's, and mentions THE SALTY DOG RAG incorrectly in her recent autobiography, FIRE IN MY SOUL (2002), as "THE YELLOW DOG RAG." She mentions folk dancing in her book with great affection as she recalls her Antioch years.
During the 60's, Antiochians often attended folk dances held by groups in large cities during co-op jobs. New York City, Chicago, the San Francisco Bay area, and Washington, DC all had several groups each, and co-oping Antiochians were always found in attendance. Antiochians were famous in folk dance circles all across the country as unusually skilled folk dancers, and were always welcomed enthusiastically at big city folk dances. Antiochians sometimes taught folk dances popular at Antioch at these off-campus dance locations.
People learned to folk dance at Antioch during basic Orientation teaching sessions, during Saturday afternoon two hour "folk dance workshop" weekly teaching sessions sponsored by Community Government, and during Physical Education classes where folk dancing was taught (these classes were very popular, and difficult to get into).
Some folk dancers at Antioch became unusually skilled, and learned and performed very advanced dances. In the course of each 60 dance Friday night event (held on Red Square outside in warm weather, and in the Gym during cold weather), 3 or 4 advanced dances were performed, including a Russian partner dance called YABLOTCHKA ("Little Apple") and a German partner dance astonishing for its intricacy called ZILLER TELLER LAENDLER.
On the other end of the spectrum were half a dozen simple but beautiful dances almost everyone know, most of them line dances. MAYIM, MISERLOU, HARMONICA, EREV SHEL SHOSHANIM, and ROAD TO THE ISLES were titles of these simple dances. On warm Spring and summer evenings, literally hundreds of students would join into these dances, which formed concentric circles around the Red Square tree which sometimes spilled off the Square due to such large numbers of dancers.
Folk dancing was led each quarter usually by a single person who acted both as Friday Night Dance DJ (programming the 60 dance sequence) and also as teacher during Orientation and during Saturday Folk Dance Workshops. During the early 60's, names of Folk Dance Leaders included Steve Edison, Stan Isaacs, Dave Sommer, Ernie Brody, Mark Post, and Andy O'Hare. I led Folk Dancing in 1964-65.
Folk dancing at Antioch is no longer the wildly popular mass phenomenon it was in the 60's. The Community Government Folk Dance phonograph record still exists, and is stored in locked cabinets in the Antioch gym, almost never used. During the 1999 Antioch Alumni Reunion which I attended, I obtained permission to tape record about 60 of the dance music records (mostly 78 RPM phonograph records) I used to include during Friday night dances in the 60's.
I danced on Red Square during the 1999 Alumni Reunion with about half a dozen other attendees as about 30 onlookers watched. The dance was programmed by one of the still existing folk dance enthusiast who live in Yellow Spring, and hold folk dances (seldom attended by Antioch students, I ws told) about once monthly.
Folk dances at Antioch in the 1960's were wonderful, even magical experiences none who ever saw them or joined in them will ever forget. Perhaps, someday, folk dancing will return to Antioch as a weekly event, and resume its popularity of decades past."
