Sautee Contra Dance Welcomes Back Early Performers

Wrap up your summer fun on Saturday, August 26, 2017, with contra dancing in Sautee with our special guest Frederick Park and his Burning Desire string band.  Frederick was here last September to help host the SNCA 35th anniversary year celebration and serve as caller for the evening contra dance.
 
Frederick is the “father” of Sautee community contra dancing and traditional music, a co-organizer of the very first community dance held in the historic gym in 1979.  That event contributed to the founding of the Sautee Nacoochee Community Association itself in 1981.

While calling the August dance, Frederick will also provide rhythm for the band, with washboard, button accordion, and harmonica.  Accompanying him will be Bob Willoughby, the longest, continuous member of the original 1979 version of Burning Desire.  Also on hand will be multi-talented fiddler Susi Gott Seguret.

Historic (circa 1990) photo of Burning Desire string band members Frederick Park and Bob Willoughby.

Burning Desire string band fiddler Susi Gott Seguret (2017)

Guitarist Bob Willoughby, from Asheville, North Carolina, is a well-respected studio musician and historian of American Roots music who plays a variety of instruments:  fiddle, guitar, banjo, mandolin, piano and various brass instruments.  For many years, Bob was the primary jazz piano-player at the historic Grove Park Inn in Asheville.

Born and raised in a family of bluegrass musicians in a log cabin in rural Madison County, NC, Susi Gott Séguret has had successful careers as a performer of traditional Appalachian music, a food writer and editor, and an internationally-recognized chef, with diplomas in gastronomy from the Cordon Bleu and the University of Reims in France.  Susi is also a teacher, sharing her musical talents on fiddle and banjo and her culinary talents through her seasonal cooking classes, which she hosts in Ithaca, N.Y.; Sonoma, Calif.; Paris, France; and each summer at the Swannanoa Gathering music series Warren Wilson College in North Carolina.

Frederick Park has many accomplishments promoting community dancing and is well-known to contra dance communities throughout the United States, as a musician, caller, humorist, storyteller and historian.  For the past 36 years Frederick has been collecting and teaching traditional dances of America, Scotland, and France.  He is well-versed as a caller for Cajun, contra, English, square and multiple styles of dance.
 
Among Fredrick’s many accomplishments are:  founder in 1981 of the “Old Farmers Ball” (a community dance in Swannanoa, North Carolina); founder of the Black Mountain Festival (traditional music and dance camp now called “LEAF”).  Frederick resides in Celo, North Carolina, near the Virginia border, and is active in a newly formed international community dance program based in Marshall, NC.

Introductory lesson, 7:30 pm; dance, 8-11 pm.  No partner or prior experience necessary.  SNCA members, $7; non-members, $10; students, $5; children 12 and under, free.  The SNC historic gym is located at 283 Highway 255 North, ¼ mile off Highway 17 in Sautee, Georgia.  Contact: 
(706) 878-3300; www.snca.org or www.sauteecontra.com.