“All join hands and circle to the left,” Courtney Kaplan said into a microphone, her pigtail braids bouncing as she called out square dance moves while people young and old joined hands.
“Now back to the right, if it takes all night,” she said next.
Bluegrass musicians playing just about every instrument imaginable crammed shoulder-to-shoulder onto a small stage, as the sound of music and laughing echoed off the walls, a fireplace crackling in the background.
“Now into the center with a great big shout,” said Kaplan, as the 60-some people hollered in unison.
This was what it sounded like to be at the Kearney Community Hall on a chilly Friday night in February. The about seven-decades-old dance hall is in the ranching community of Banner in Northeast Wyoming, nestled in the Bighorn Mountains near Story. It’s off I-90 about 20 minutes in either direction from Sheridan and Buffalo.
It’s one of many dance halls being revived for community members living in isolated places.
“ I used to drive by this hall and for years it had been sort of abandoned,” Kaplan explained.
That’s until in 2010, when Kaplan and a friend cut the lock off the doors with boltcutters. She and other musicians wanted a venue to play in and knew there was a big oak floor here.
“I knew it was a great floor for dancing and that was the reason, enough to save the building,” she said.
From there, Kaplan and others formed a nonprofit which came to own the building. They fundraised, one pie auction or chili feed at a time, to replace the leaky ceiling and broken windows, and fix the holey floor.
They officially opened the doors in 2017. Now, twinkling lights hang from the wooden ceiling beams and colorful quilts cover the walls.
“You see these kids, they're not running around with their phone in their hand,” Scott Gall, who’s on the nonprofit board and is Kaplan’s partner in crime. “The big kids are helping the little kids dance. It's pretty cool.”
“Okay, so it's not politics. It's not religion,” Kaplan jumped in. “The saying is square dancing is the most fun you can have with your clothes on.”
“It’s just good, clean community fun,” Kaplan said.
Good, clean community fun. Attendees uttered that phrase frequently at the square dance night. But it hasn’t always been so clean. Oldtimers said people used to party until daylight back in the ’60s and ’70s. Nonprofit board member Joe Foss played in a band here then.
“I guess dancing is a physical form of appreciation of the music. And you saw all kinds about midnight,” Foss said laughing.
The same was true across the west. It was a way for cowboys and other residents to “shake off the dust of the week,” said American west author Chip Schweiger, who has what he calls a “cowboy mustache.”
He recently wrote about dance halls on his website, “Way out West.” He said near the turn of the 20th century, they acted like “social infrastructure,” places to share the news and meet future spouses.
“We talk about the West being beautiful because it's vast, but that vastness also creates isolation,” said Schweiger, who lives in Fort Worth, Texas. “And so what the dance halls did was create a sense of community.”
That’s the goal in Cody. The Wyoming town is on the edge of Yellowstone National Park and is also reinvesting in dance halls. In mid-April, a group of locals re-opened the doors at Cassie’s to a crowd of people eager to swing dance to live country rock music.
Cassie’s Steakhouse and Saloon has long been an institution for western dancing
“It's a Frankenstein of a building,” said one of the co-owners, Mike Jones. “Each room has history for when it was added and why it was added.”
At one point, Cassie’s was a brothel. It’s actually named after the woman who owned it in the early 1900s.
“Under the dance floor, actually, is hollow because that's where they were making booze and moonshine during the prohibition,” Jones said.
Jones, who spent most of his life in Cody, remembers Cassie’s most for the music and dancing.
“I remember walking in those big front doors because the parking lot’s full, so I had my mom drop me off at the gas station across the street,” Jones recalled. “The band's off to the right, having a good time on the old stage. This place is packed.”
That’s the feeling Jones said he’s been chasing since Cassie’s shut down in 2024.
“Where it's nice and quiet on the outside. You can kind of hear the music, and you open the doors, and it's just a whole new world in there,” he said.
The trick for keeping these community centers open is finding people to carry on the legacy.
At the Kearney Community Hall in Banner, Wyo., that’s the nonprofit’s next mission.
“Because we're not kids,” said longtime board member Rick Pallister, who described the project as “a labor of love” — emphasis on the “labor.”
But the nonprofit has some contenders, like 9-year-old Emerson Villegas, who was playing the fiddle on stage on that lively Friday night in February.
“I really like playing in front of people,” Emerson said. “Sometimes I'm nervous, but sometimes I'm not 'cause I know that it brings people joy.”
There’s also Brooke Holzemer, who is learning to call the square dance moves.
“Eight move forward, and six move back. Now rotate right,” the 20-year-old told the eager crowd.
Holzemer said this dance hall is one of the reasons she plans to stay in this community.
She smiled, “It’s pretty unique.”
This story was produced by the Mountain West News Bureau, a collaboration between Wyoming Public Media, Nevada Public Radio, Boise State Public Radio in Idaho, KUNR in Nevada, KUNC in Northern Colorado, KANW in New Mexico, Colorado Public Radio, KJZZ in Arizona and NPR, with additional support from affiliate newsrooms across the region. Funding for the Mountain West News Bureau is provided in part by the Corporation for Public Broadcasting and Eric and Wendy Schmidt.
