The ticket booth still graces the entry at Simonton Corner Community Hall, a weathered, board-and-batten building in Rockport that has been a town fixture for more than a century. On Saturday, Oct. 3, that old booth will be put to use again, when the MidCoast Maine Community Square Dance series holds its next gathering inside: a family dance at 4 p.m., a community potluck at 5, and a square dance party for teens and adults from 6 to 8:30.
The evening is the latest chapter in a series that has been, by its own organizers' account, back after a nine-month hiatus. The dances have moved around Midcoast Maine over the years. Now the series has settled at Simonton Corner, a hall that has hosted dances, rummage sales, and public suppers for generations.
That continuity is the point. The hall, according to the Rockport historical group Legacy Rockport, has been a Rockport staple for the past 101 years, and it still hosts dances, rummage sales, public suppers, and private events. Over the past five years a motivated group of members has raised money to keep the aged building compliant with safety codes. They secured the kitchen addition, treated the ceiling for fire resistance, preserved the old ticket booth, insulated the floor, improved the restrooms to include handicap access, and installed a new oil furnace after removing the original wood furnace. The exterior facing the river got a new board-and-batten facelift, and broken windows were replaced. The work is not done: the next five years' goals include replacing the roof and updating the kitchen.
The hall sits in a village with its own deep history. Simonton Corner takes its name from a landscape shaped by the lime industry — the Simonton Corner Quarry Preserve, an abandoned limestone quarry, is now a preserve managed by the Coastal Mountains Land Trust, a place to observe Rockport's historic lime quarries. The impulse to build a place where neighbors could assemble, it seems, runs deep here.
What happens inside Simonton Corner on Oct. 3 is deliberately unpretentious. The band will include Emily Jeffries, Benjamin Foss and Baron Collins-Hill, with sit-in musicians welcome. The caller will be Chris Ricciotti. Ricciotti, now based in Montville, is a caller with a long and storied resume. He fell in love with dancing as a boy in 1966, when his Phys Ed class in Coventry, R.I., included old-time square dancing set to 78 rpm records from the "Honor Your Partner" series, called by Ed and Don Durlacher. Those records, he has said, were the seeds that led him to old-time square and eventually contra dancing.
Ricciotti went on to become a dancer, teacher, caller, and organizer, and a pillar of the gender-free dance community. He founded and led the Boston Gender-Free Contra Dancers, whose signature move, as The Harvard Crimson once put it, was Ricciotti calling dances from the floor. He has written what amounts to a book on gender-free dancing and a history of the JP Contra Dance. In a CDSS podcast interview, he described moving to Montville to fulfill his dream of living in a rural farmhouse, working the land, and being part of a rural community. "There's no greater love than bringing new people into a dance and having them smile and say, I love this, I want to come back," he said. "That gives me the biggest thrill and the biggest feeling of accomplishment and satisfaction and joy."
That philosophy shows up in how these dances are run. In a news release for a June dance in the same series, Ricciotti said, "Our dances are friendly, warm, welcoming and inclusive. Our goal is to help you have fun." The admission is a sliding scale of $7 to $20, with cash, checks, PayPal, and Venmo accepted at the door, and extra donations welcome. No one is turned away for inability to pay. Onsite volunteers can get a reduced rate or free admission for their help.
The Oct. 3 schedule is built to ease people in. The 4 to 5 p.m. family dance is pitched at families with kids and at beginners who want more instruction on the basics. The 5 to 6 p.m. community potluck asks people to bring their favorite dinner foods to share, or snack and dessert foods for later. The 6 to 8:30 p.m. square dance party is aimed at a more experienced level — teens and adults, and kids 10 or older or kids who have been dancing for a while. All dances are taught, and no experience is necessary. No partner is required either.
The series runs on volunteer labor, and it says so plainly. Help is needed with setup before the dance at 3 p.m., door sitters during the dance, setup for the potluck dinner, cleanup after the potluck, and cleanup at the end of the dance. The message is blunt: your help ensures the dances can continue.
That reliance on neighbors is part of a broader Midcoast ecosystem of traditional music and dance. Belfast Flying Shoes, founded in 2005, describes its mission as building community and cultivating well-being through the joy of traditional music and dance for people of all backgrounds and identities in Midcoast Maine. Its programs include the Flying Shoes Radio Hour podcast, featuring tunes and conversations with contra dance musicians. The organization has partnered with the Rockport Opera House and the Town of Rockport on events like the Rockport Donut Festival's "Do-Si-Donuts" community contra dance, where Ricciotti called folk dancing for all ages and experience levels, with especially easy dances early on.
There is a practical, unglamorous reason these gatherings matter to the people who run them. Dances at small rural halls are not ticketed concerts; they are potlucks and door donations and volunteer shifts, and they survive only as long as someone is willing to set up chairs and sit at the door. The nine-month pause in this series is a reminder of how easily such things lapse, and how deliberately they have to be revived.
For now, the revival is on. On a Saturday in early October, during what the organizers call the colorful autumn season, the doors of Simonton Corner will open at 3 for setup, at 4 for the family dance, and at 5 for a shared meal. By 6:30, the floor will be full of teen and adult dancers learning the figures as they go, called by a man who first learned to square dance from a 78 rpm record in a Rhode Island gymnasium six decades ago. The old ticket booth by the entry will be doing its job again.