We are posting with permission the email that the Foothill Country Dancers sent to members recently. This is sad news for everyone from the Sacramento area who has danced in Nevada City and Newcastle, and past events such as Fall Has Sprung.

It is critically important that our local and regional dancers come back and dance in Sacramento, so that we don’t meet the fate of the Foothill group.

Members of the Foothill Country Dancers Community,

We are sad to report that the long-awaited return of the Nevada City contradance is not to be. The board has voted to dissolve the organization and we have begun the process of distributing our modest assets to other nonprofits.

We won’t burden you with all the reasoning that went into this decision. Much of it was laid out in the email we sent in November. The very short version is that we cannot under the current circumstances both recruit a new generation of leaders and managers and rebuild our dancer base.

FCD is not the only contradance organization laid low by the pandemic and other factors beyond our control. Many other dances around the country are struggling. In our region, the organizations that sponsored dances in Chico and in Reno have also closed down. However, our sister organization in Sacramento, the Sacramento Country Dance Society, has doggedly persisted. They brought back contra dancing and English country dancing early in 2022 and have been offering regular dances—masks required—since then. We hope you will attend their dances when you feel ready.

Special gratitude and recognition are owed to the people who, after our dances were halted early in 2020, offered to help out in various ways when the hoped-for time came to start back up. They are: Pamela Halloran, Carlyle Miller, Becky Smith, Jeff Illgner, Carol Turner, Erika DeVito, Sue Billingsley, Jan Foster, Keith Montgomery, Karen Leyse, Peter Ramsay, Carol Harvey, Susan Sanford, Arlene Jamar, Dewey Bandy, Donna Wolken, Shoko Call, and Ralph Williams.

It is also important to thank and recognize those who, in various ways, have helped contra dancing happen in the northern Sierra foothills since our founding in the early 1990s. These folks are: our founders and early board members (Susan Murphy, Carol Riggs, Steve Nicola, Laurie DeJardins, Barry Mingst, Bill Vicars, Margaret Pearson, Jamie Lynn, Mark Harling, Phyllis Wong, Isel Lamoreux, Jim Lawson, Christina Slowick); our dedicated house musicians (Barry Angell, Rudy Darling, Ken Nilsson, Mark Botic, Lonna Whipple, David Wright, Dave Kistler, Cheryl McKinney); the originators of the series of annual 12-hour dances held from 1998 to 2013 (Lonna Whipple and Jamie Lynne); our regular local callers (Joyce Miller, Bob O’Brien, Eric Curl, Susan Murphy, Mike Renow); later and current board members (Dan Skeahan, Bonnie Terry, Judy Netherwood, Bill Ewald, Bonnie Terry, Thea Blair, Cathy Collings, Joyce Miller, Lisa Frankel, Eric Engles, Bob O’Brien, Christy Barden, Rick Peltier, Rebecca Poage, Gregory Wilson, Chris Alford, Christina Slowick, Lonna Whipple, David King, Michael Brackney, Sara Larsen, Bridget Priest, Betsy Abrams, Sue Jones); and key volunteers (Tim Billingsley, Anne Marie Jaggi, Dewey Bandy, Ralph Williams, Amanda Schmidt, David Bird, Jimmie Spearow, Pamela Hall, Sharon Joy Jahoda, Claudia Schiller, Doug Gordon, Daron Scarborough, Jeff Illgner, Arlene Jamar, Sarito Whatley). Apologies to anyone whose name is not listed!

All these people and many more contributed much time and energy to Foothill Country Dancers because they and we strongly believe in the essential goodness of an activity that is non-commercial, self-organized, and community-based and which brings people of different kinds together to dance, connect, and create unique moments of joy. For nearly 30 years we all worked to make the world, or at least our small corner of it, a better place.

An existing local organization has expressed some interest in holding contradances in the future. If this comes to pass, we will use this list to notify you. If you want your name and email address removed from the list now, reply to this email with a “please remove” request.

We are grateful for your participation in the dance community. Remember what dances in Nevada City, Grass Valley, Auburn, and Newcastle meant to you and carry that spirit forward.

Board of Directors, Foothill Country Dancers