Before Jack Daly of Burlington showed up at his first social dance in 2016, the only dancing he’d done besides “jumping up and down at rock concerts” involved a single frustrating salsa class with a very stern teacher. But in the dark winter months after the breakup of his marriage, the then-64-year-old’s spirits were low. He hadn’t gotten out of the house in a while. When he heard about a pop-up dance event just around the corner on Pine Street, he checked it out.
Inside the warehouse turned venue, Sarah Snow, then a 26-year-old University of Vermont grad with a platinum-blond side-swept pixie cut and a buoyant manner, led dozens of dancers through a series of simple salsa steps. Once the lesson was over, the DJ played Latin and African dance songs of various tempos and vibes, and dancers of all levels spun around the floor.
Daly, who had been bracing for another authoritarian instructor, was delighted by Snow’s playfulness. “Sarah was so enthusiastic about the whole thing. It really caught me up,” he recalled. He began attending regular evening classes in three styles of partner dance.
A decade later, now living in Texas, Daly still dances several times a week. “Every time [I dance], even just doing warm-ups, I feel this glow happening,” he explained. “Getting into the dance community opened up a lot of different kinds of connections with people. It’s been one of the highlights of my life.”
Many seek the type of healing Daly found on the dance floor — especially post-pandemic, when few places sanction platonic social touching, and during a loneliness crisis so intense the former U.S. surgeon general called it an “epidemic.” In the state’s rural communities, minimal nightlife and long winters tend to deter evening outings.
So Vermonters might be surprised by just how many of their neighbors have been dancing their way to connection and joy. From Hardwick to Rutland to Burlington, teachers and organizers say their weekly or monthly dances sometimes attract upwards of 100 attendees, typically a mix of dedicated dancers and newbies.
Whatever the dance style, these “dance socials” or “open dances” have a few things in common. Everyone is welcome, regardless of experience level; the point is to have fun, not to be perfect; and participants are encouraged to mingle and dance with strangers rather than stick with friends or romantic partners. In many cases, brief lessons precede the gatherings, giving everybody a few steps on which to build.
We talked to some organizers and attendees of line dancing, honky-tonk, and Latin and African partner-dance socials — just some of the styles offered around Vermont. Contra dances also frequently draw huge crowds, and there are robust West Coast Swing and Lindy Hop communities, ballroom dancing experts, and folks who groove to the blues.
Toeing the Line
Andrea Warren, who grew up in Addison County, went line dancing with her friends every Thursday night when she was a college student in Rochester, N.Y. “It kept me sane,” she laughed. Returning to Vermont in 2014, she searched for a place to continue dancing and found … crickets. So she taught herself to read written choreographies and founded her own company, now called Good Time Line Dancing.
Warren teaches several days a week and says the group’s weekly lesson and open dance at Woodchuck Cider House and Taproom in Middlebury can draw up to 100 dancers. One of her particularly adept former students, Jenna Lossmann, now teaches for Good Time, often hosting four or five smaller classes each week ($10 at most venues).
Warren’s students first learn a sequence of repeating steps choreographed to a particular song, such as “3 Tequila Floor” by Josiah Siska or “Copperhead Road” by Steve Earle. She builds on the initial moves until the dancers can complete the whole dance comfortably. Once learned, these steps can be swapped to accompany any song with a similar tempo and beat.
When class ends, Warren morphs into a DJ and spins tunes — country, contemporary, pop, R&B, rock — while folks line dance, boot scoot and two-step. People are really surprised when “Hot in Herre” by Nelly comes on, she said. “If it has 32 counts, we’ll dance to [it].”
Kelsey Layden, 31, grew up in Vermont and was a dedicated ballerina for 23 years. Returning to the state a decade ago, she struggled to find community — until she and some friends discovered Good Time Line Dancing. Now, Layden regularly drives more than an hour to the gatherings at Woodchuck.
“It’s such a fun way to get out and be active,” she enthused, noting that line dancing allows dancers to layer their “own flair” on top of the basics, continuing to have fun as they improve.
We Are Legion
Fifty-eight years ago, Willie “Bud” Stevens met a pretty girl named Dorothy, or “Dot,” at the Caledonia County Fair in Lyndonville. “We hit it off and started going to dances,” Bud said. Married before they began their senior year of high school, the 75-year-old Hardwick residents have been dancing together ever since.
So it’s no surprise that the Stevenses showed up for the first edition of the Hardwick Honky Tonk, held at the town’s American Legion. The tinsel-spangled get-together is put on semi-regularly by the Civic Standard, a local nonprofit formed in 2022 to foster fun and community spirit.
“It was kind of a disaster,” Bud reminisced about the first event. “People running into each other or just standing on the dance floor.”
That very night, the organizers recruited Bud and Dot to teach lessons in the Texas two-step before letting folks loose on the dance floor. These days, Bud said he witnesses more cohesion and fewer collisions.
Finding ways to have fun in spaces that welcome the entire community is part of the Civic Standard’s raison d’être, according to cofounder and executive artistic director Rose Friedman. “Dancing and singing are a funny kind of vulnerable intimacy,” she said. “Everybody’s sort of bumping around, and there’s a grace and forgiveness you constantly have to give each other. There’s something loving when that happens.”
Who attends Honky Tonk? Apparently, pretty much everybody. Friedman said the event has been known to attract visitors from Montréal, hunters taking a break from deer camp, recent transplants from urban areas and some of the town’s most revered elders. No matter how much the floor bounces, though, “Phil, the bar manager at the Legion, says it’s incredible that we always manage to have exactly 149 people,” Friedman noted with a chuckle.
Katy Knuth, a longtime community member, artist, farmer and bartender, loves dancing and attends most of the Honky Tonks. She’s even joined the Legion as an auxiliary member. In her view, the Civic Standard is on to something.
“[Honky Tonk] has been a real bridge for the rural queer community and the Legion,” she said. “I don’t want to say this is a Band-Aid called social dancing and problems disappear, but being able to enjoy a space together is going to humanize [people] when tough conversations come up.”
Building those sorts of bridges is why the Civic Standard keeps holding the dances, though the tickets (suggested donation $10) don’t cover the costs. Honky Tonk “isn’t a moneymaker for us; it’s a money loser,” Friedman said, “but we’re a nonprofit, and sometimes a money loser is worth it.”
Salsa Verde
When kids leave for college, Steve Bronstein said, it’s not unusual for parents to “suddenly look at each other and go, ‘Who are you?’” With their newfound freedom, the Marshfield blacksmith and his wife, lawyer Sandra Paritz, searched for common hobbies. They landed on Latin and African dancing, and about a decade ago they became regulars at Snow’s classes in Burlington — the same ones that Daly joined.
Like Daly, Bronstein and Paritz began with salsa, then branched out into other dances, including bachata from the Dominican Republic and kizomba from Angola.
“You go to class tired and leave energized,” Bronstein said. “Dance is this interesting respite from the rest of the world. For three minutes, all that exists is you and your partner and your connection and solving the problem of how to move together in space.”
Snow was always at home on the dance floor; after college, she became a World Latin Dance Cup champion in kizomba. For years, she worked day jobs and co-taught dance classes at night, dreaming of becoming a full-time dance teacher.
After COVID-19, seeing how hungry people were for connection, she committed herself to making a living as a dance instructor. “It was the same type of thing that happens in winter,” she suggested about the pandemic. “People wanted to get out there. [We all] need physical activity, but we also need community.”
Snow enjoys the interplay of the leading and following roles in the dances she teaches, and she believes it’s important for people to have “the opportunity to experience physical touch in a safe place.” Bronstein echoed her sentiment: “I observe that there are a lot of people who are there for human contact,” he said. “I think it’s not uncommon for it to be the only day of the week that somebody touches them.”
Snow’s company, SnowMotion Dance, offers regular weekly classes and social dances at locations such as Switchback Beer Garden & Smokehouse in Burlington and Four Quarters Brewing in Winooski. Some of her most dedicated students help with the teaching. When the stars align, socials can sometimes attract 75 or more to the SnowMotion dance floor.
Many social dance regulars noted that, besides improving physical and mental health and fostering community, dance is a form of communication. Once you’ve begun learning a dance, you can sync up with anybody else who knows that style, even if you don’t speak a word of their language.
Since they began dancing, Bronstein and Paritz have chosen some of their vacations based on the opportunity to dance. They’ve done salsa in Cuba and Mexico, Boston and Baltimore. “All you have to do is put your hand out, and the person takes your hand, and you dance,” Bronstein said.
Daly has experienced the same thing in Texas, where many salsa class participants speak only Spanish: “We dance, and we [just] communicate that way.”
“Dance is a low-stakes way that we can kind of love each other,” Friedman said. “Like anything in our culture, you can make it really complicated, really expensive, or you can just sort of say, ‘Well, come on down to the Honky Tonk and step on your neighbor’s toes.’” ➆
This article appears in Winter Preview • 2026.
Got something to say?
Send a letter to the editor and we'll publish your feedback in print!
