50 years of calling it square

With more than a half-century of practice under his belt, Tommy White pulled out his notes and cleared his throat.

"One in three, lead to the right. Circle up four," he chanted to a group of imaginary dancers, a singsong swagger and sway punctuating each word cluster. "The head man break and make lines. Pass through and do a wheel-and-deal. Center pass through. Swing through the outside two. Girls trade. Boys trade. Same-sex trade."

Put a tune behind it, a microphone in smooth-talkin' Tommy's hands and put a group of people in multiples of four on a floor out front, and you'll see a square little slice of southern life - the square dance.

But no square dance is complete without a man with a plan and a practiced tongue - its mastermind and architect.

Tommy White is one of the last such masters of the craft in the Odessa/Midland area.

The art of the square dance and its calling seems to have hit a lull in popularity, White said, and now even the group's bimonthly meetings only draw a crowd of about 16 dancers, and that's on a good night.

"Right now, we're lucky if we have two squares at a club dance," he said.

"It's just fell off to where we don't have that many active dancers in the area," his wife, Beverly White, added. "I'm talking Midland and Odessa and all around."

"If we have two squares," he said, "it's considered a big dance ... now."

The couple said Odessa once hosted a large festival at the Ector County Coliseum, sometimes with more than 100 squares - that's 800 people - but attendance dwindled and the festival closed its doors sometime in the past 10 years.

"It's fell off all over the country, really," Tommy White said, recalling more than five decades of a rich square dancing history in the Basin.

SQUARE DANCING'S HAY DAY
Rewind to 1958 and you'll find a different vinyl on the record player, a time when Tommy White, a 26-year-old up-and-comer at Texas Electric, was still new to the Permian Basin.

"I was always real shy, couldn't get up in front of an audience much," he remembered.

But some family friends of the Whites kept pressing them to come to a dance sometime and give it a shot.

He and Beverly eventually agreed to give it a go.

And something seemed to stick.

"They just played this record until we got to where we didn't know what we were doing, and they'd stop and explain to us how to do the next move," Tommy White said. "They kept working with us until we got through that whole record."

Not long after that and the area's main caller went pro, so Tommy White was asked to pick up the mike and take his place - shy or not.

Since then, he said, he hasn't looked back.

"It kind of started out as a hobby then kind of worked its way up to a full-time job," he said, referring to both his live calling and the 20-plus calling records he has recorded with a Houston company, all in his spare time. "Now, I worked 40 years with Texas Electric, and this was just doing it on the side."

With her husband on stage ever since, Beverly White said, flashing a smile at Tommy, she hasn't had as many opportunities to dance.

"Most of the time," she said, "my favorite partner had a microphone in his hands."

THE MUSIC FADES
As the years and decades went on, Tommy White has called private events like debutante balls and wedding receptions, but, of course, he said the demand has fallen off quite a bit in the past decade or so. 

At lessons today, the absence of a generation of would-be dancers is palpable.

The classes barely have any enrollment at all. 

"They'll offer lessons, but they don't always have enough people come out," Beverly White said. "We used to have big classes."

"Yeah," Tommy said. "We used to have 12, 14 squares."

"But now everybody has so many other things to do. I think a lot of people would rather stay at home in their pajamas on the computer," Beverly White said.

Her husband laughed.
"If we could get young people interested in it, I think we could really get it going again," he said.

"It has come and gone before, but it's never gone this low before," Beverly White said.

Tommy White, however, remains hopeful.

"I think it'll pick back up eventually," Tommy added, "once people get tired of watching TV and their computers." 

A SURPRISING RISE
Jerry Reed, executive director of CALLERLAB, the International Association of Square Dance Callers, said square dancing's popularity in the United States varies by region.

He said some places, like Long Beach, Calif., have seen signs of an upswing in interested youth who have set their sights on becoming square dance callers.

But that's not the case everywhere.

"It kind of depends on the area," Reed said. "There are some areas who have dancers who want to become callers. It's really hard to generalize throughout the whole United States."

He agreed with the Whites, however, that the folk dance's rise has been marked in other countries across the world, most notably Japan, where callers are learning the craft.

In fact, callers are signing up all over the world, Reed said, from the Czech Republic to Germany. In fact, he said there's even a new breed of callers in Russia.

"It intrigues me that there are actually Germans who go to Russia to help the Russian callers learn how to call," he said. "Forty, 50, 60 years ago, you would say that's never going to happen."

But that's not all.
Guess what language all these callers from across the globe call their dances in.

Yep. English.
At the CALLERLAB annual convention in the United States, callers come from all over the world to celebrate the art, Reed said, many of who cannot speak a word of English.

Unless they have a microphone in their hand.

"It's truly amazing to see that happen," Reed said. "It's like a language to itself."

LAST DANCE?
Now in his mid-70s, Tommy White doesn't know how many more doe-si-does he can call for folks here in West Texas, but he's in no hurry to stop doing what he loves.

"You meet a lot of good friends," he said. "I've met so many good, lifelong friends over the years."

"I guess what's kept me in it is the people," he continued. "I enjoy the people. I've met some great friends."

And Reed at CALLERLAB echoed Tommy White's sentiments.

"We can't stress enough the social benefits of square dancing," he said. "It's amazing to see people come together and trust each other the way that square dancers do."

IF YOU GO
>> What: Bi-monthly square dances.
>> When: 8 p.m. on the first and third Friday of each month.
>> Where: Northside Senior Center, 1225 Adams Ave.
>> Admission: Free.
>> Only experienced square dancers are welcome to participate. Everyone is invited to watch. Alcohol prohibited. Families encouraged.
>> Call: Northside Senior Center at 337-5281.