Adirondack Broom Dance

Written By

Conni Berns

April 23, 2007

Someone was assigned to sweep the deck.  We would start the warm-up in the studio, and as the day warmed-up we could move outdoors to ther 30×30 deck surrounded on three sides by pvc pipe barres.  Blanche could watch us from her kitchen window when she had her tea, and when she invited Avo over, she would also be keeping an eye on us.  Dancing in the outdoors was amazing.  The sky above, the fresh air, the sounds, the insects, it was very alive and real.  Music intensified the experience.  Emotionally more striking, we danced more electrically, and reached out farther, the walls no longer held in our motions.  We tried to stretch to the stars, to touch the clouds.  It was a surreal experience.  To feel wind while you dance, to see a chipmunk scurry across the dance floor, it was a hoot.   My grandmother had named him “Baldwin”, but that is another story.

There were always students assigned to sweep the dining room.  One day a student swept up a piece of white bread.  AvO  examined it.  She called everyone in for a meeting.  She tended toward the thrifty side, after her days of starvation during The War.  There was a fuzzy bunny bank on the buffet into which each student had to donate a quarter whenever they left the lights on in their room, after they left.  She pointed to the bread that was wasted.  “Someone took a bite of this bread, the center has a big hole in it.  They did not want to eat the crust.  Then they threw it on the floor.  That is wasteful.  We cannot do this.  If you take it, you eat it, or do not take it. During The War we would have fought for a crust like this!”  She then took a string, and hung it from one of the lovely blue tiffany lamps that hung in the dining room.  It was a daily reminder of wastefulness to us all.  I shudder to think how the guilty one must have felt (we never knew who that was!).

 So much sand in the Adirondacks: we brought sand into the cabin at every moment.  Sweep the rooms, sweep the studio, the deck, the dining hall.  Eventually the dancers composed the Adirondack Broom Dance, with Brooms,  and dancing together swept the deck, practiced steps, listened to music, and  expressed themselves in true AvO style.