March Square Dance / Augusta Heritage Center

Augusta Heritage Center of Davis & Elkins College will host an old-time square dance at 8 p.m. Friday, March 11 in Myles Center for the Arts Pit Dance Studio as part of the Mountain Dance Trail Project. Born Old, with Doug Van Gundy on fiddle and Paul Gartner on guitar and banjo, will provide music, while Taylor Runner of Morgantown will call the dances.

A beginners’ workshop is set for 7:45 p.m. with the dance starting at 8 p.m. All dances are beginner and family friendly and participants don’t need to come with a dance partner. Admission is $6 for general public, $4 for students and AmeriCorps members, and free to Davis & Elkins College students, faculty and staff.

“We love playing for square dances,” Van Gundy says.
Gartner and Van Gundy have been playing together in Born Old since 1998 and are heavily influenced by the music of the Hammons Family, Melvin Wine and many other West Virginia old-time musicians. Both Gartner and Van Gundy have won awards for the music talents throughout the region including the Vandalia Gathering in Charleston and the West Virginia State Folk Festival in Glenville.
“Born Old is no stranger to the Elkins area, and every Elkins square dance they’ve played has been a blast,” says Becky Hill, Mountain Dance Trail coordinator. “Their music is bound to inspire you to take a spin on the dance floor.”

The dance is part of The Mountain Dance Trail, a heritage tourism project of Augusta Heritage Center of Davis & Elkins College, which hosts a square dance almost every weekend in the heart of West Virginia. The Mountain Dance Trail 2016 schedule with square dances across the Mountain State is now available online and in the MDT brochure. The next Elkins square dance is slated for Friday, April 15 with music by the Jesse Milnes Square Dance Orchestra with Mike Costello calling. To learn more, visit www.mountaindancetrail.org or call the Augusta Heritage Center at 304-637-1209.

A D&E center of excellence for more than 40 years, the Augusta Heritage Center of Davis & Elkins College offers several week-long programs featuring instruction in many traditions of music, dance, craft and folklore. Concerts, dances, a summer festival and other heritage arts events are part of the Augusta experience. The Augusta Heritage Center is also home to significant collections of field recordings, oral histories, photographs, instruments and Appalachian art.

Programs offered by the Augusta Heritage Center of Davis & Elkins College are presented with financial assistance from the West Virginia Division of Culture and History and the National Endowment for the Arts with approval from the West Virginia Commission on the Arts.