Alumni Profiles

Save the Last Dance The master of colonial dances wants a tradition to carry on By Suki Casanave '86G

Easy to print version

Erin Gleason

On an early December night at the Wayside Inn in Sudbury, Mass., George Fogg '53 is balancing on one foot, his knee slightly bent. His other foot hovers just above the pine floorboards, toe turned outward. The music has stopped. His voice is insistent. "Don't put your weight down!" he orders. "That turned-out foot must not touch the floor." He demonstrates several times. Then he waves his hand and the music begins again. The dancers are moving in a circle now. Left, right, left, touch. Repeat.

These are the Wayside Steppers, a group of history re-enactors, who gather each week to learn from Fogg, who has been teaching English and colonial dance for more than 50 years. The social dances that America's early settlers brought with them from Europe were elegant and refined. "But believe me, the slower you dance, the harder it is," says Priscilla Borden, a dance teacher who considers herself Fogg's apprentice. "You do it all on the balls of your feet—and these dances can go on for half an hour."

Fogg is a benevolent stickler on matters of form, doing his best to cajole his 21st-century students to master the discipline of an earlier time. The dance floor of the past was, after all, a place to see and be seen. Dancers could be scouting for suitable spouses, making political deals or striking up business partnerships. "Dancing was a way of rising up in society and increasing your wealth," says Fogg. And you'd better know what you were doing—because if you were out of step, literally or figuratively, there would be consequences.

As Fogg's students perfect the steps, there is less and less instruction. At moments, there is only the sound of the music, the shuffle of moving feet, the steady weave and swirl of the dance.The dancers move in a blur of traditional and contemporary dress, some in waistcoats and long skirts, others in blue jeans and fleece—a sort of kaleidoscope of past and present, a visual metaphor for the survival of traditional dance in the midst of modern life.

What's being preserved, though, is more than a series of graceful steps. "It's a real community," says Fogg, who credits his lifelong love of dance for his wide network of friends. "George is very much devoted to keeping the tradition going," says Borden, noting that his books—painstaking translations of notes made by early dance masters—help to preserve these musical treasures for modern usage.

Fogg's devotion to tradition is his gift to the future. He wants people to get up and dance. He wants them to join the community that has shaped and enriched his own life. Even his 21st-century e-mail sign-off reflects his passion for the past—and his hope for the future: "Dance on!"