Saturday night was the [Illinois All Night Dance](http://www.prairienet.org/contra/iand.html) in McLean, Ill. I was the featured caller, or, as it said on the promotional materials, the “host”. :) I thought that was kind of funny.

After a lot of discussion about who all might be joining me on the trip, it turned out to be just Matece and I. It was very nice to have company, we had some great conversations along the way. It was nice to spend some “QT”, as she called it, noting that we really never had before. So good.

The dance itself was fun. It’s in this remarkable place… the town is surrounded by farms, and it exists seemingly for the sole purpose of giving farmers a good place to load their crops onto trains. So, the main fixture of the town is a grain elevator next to railroad track. Near that is what’s called the “town hall” although it seems more a community center than a center of politics. I don’t know. Anyway, it has a beautiful dance floor in it, not very big but lovely. There’s a decent stage on one side of the square dance hall, and balconies around the other three sides. Very nice.

One quirk, about which I had been warned: the floor slopes. It’s imperceptable if you’re just on it, but… wow, it makes the dance line move! A line will start in the center of the hall and around half way through the tune it will have drifted all the way to one of the walls. Fascinating phenomenon, and it repeated on almost every dance of the whole night. :)

Calling was fun. My role as host was a bit confusing… since the dance was scheduled from 8p to 2a, they don’t expect one person to call the whole time. That’s wise. What they do then is have volunteer calling as well. That’s not a bad idea, but it wasn’t very structured, and what I found is that I didn’t make as much of a connection with the dancers as I normally do when I’m the hired caller. But, hey, it meant that I could dance! So, I did a mix of calling and dancing, and some of the other callers there were very good, so it worked out just fine. The music was good. People had fun. I guess the only thing that would have made it a lot better would have been more dancers. Ah, well. It was still fun.