**Morgan:** Welcome to Zeitgeist Radio, the podcast for music lovers to expand their horizons into new and interesting musical subcultures. I'm your host, Morgan Roe, founder of the Zeitgeist Academy. Each episode, I interview someone from a different musical community. Zeitgeist means spirit of the times. And my goal is to make that spirit come alive for you and help you appreciate musical communities you may not know much about.
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That's z e i t g e i s t academy dot com slash radio.
My guests today are Sharisa Oie and Lydia McAnerney from the Tapestry Folk Dance Center in Minneapolis. Both of you, welcome to Zeitgeist Radio. Thank you. Thanks for having us. Good to be here. I'm so excited to dig into what this, with this whole community is so first of all, let's get a little bit background on you can you both introduce yourselves and who you are musically?
**Sherisa:** Sure. This is Sharisa speaking. I, my background is actually more in dance than music, although I did start college as a musical theater major and have a decent amount of training in vocal performance. But in college I made a, you know, a right hand turn into arts administration and never looked back.
And so my career has been fully on the arts management side, primarily in dance, although I have worked with music and theater. As well in various capacities, but I've worked a lot in dance education spaces and with dance companies as well. And I started at tapestry about nine months ago now has executive director.
And yeah, and then thrilled to be part of kind of helping propel this community forward. It's a really unique. Dance space in the country, dance and music, but space in the United States.
**Lydia:** I come at this more as a participant. I've been dancing here since 1986 and in the various locations where Tapestry's been.
I was on the staff for about six years here. So in the early 80 or early nineties, I guess I was on the staff and helped buy and repurchase. Retrofit this building. So that's kind of where, and I can continue to dance. I've been a country dancer and I've been mostly English country dancing now, since my body doesn't allow for country dancing quite so but I'm a regular volunteer here and I've gotten to know the staff and love seeing the changes that are happening here.
So moving forward.
**Morgan:** I love it. Lydia, we have similar backgrounds. Well, you brought up a very interesting thing which is tapestry is a physical space now, but that hasn't always been the case. how would you define tapestry? What is tapestry?
**Sherisa:** . I'm the newbie on the block, but I can start.
So man, I should have written it down. Maybe later I'll go get it, but there's a quote on a quilt that's in one of our hallways that, talks about the tapestry of community and the tapestry of dance expressions and so tapestry. Yes, we have a physical building now, but we were an organization long before we bought a building and we are so much more than a physical space and the name is, I think, right is right.
We have. Many different styles and many different kinds of people who come into into our physical space and engage with all of these different participatory dance forms. So short, like tapestry is a community. It's 1 of our core values. Tapestry is diverse community that comes together around the joys of dance.
And dancing together and listening to music together. That's amazing. And then it happens to also have a building
**Lydia:** now. Right. Yeah. Yeah, I think just looking back over the last, we've just celebrated our 40, last year we celebrated birthday parties at all of our events for 40 years. Yes. Just seeing those people come who have maybe not danced for a long time even though maybe they haven't been in the building for, you know, many years.
People came out to see what we have become, and we are a community of people you know, trying to weave together those different parts that make up who we are and what we do here.
**Morgan:** That's amazing. So Lydia, if you've been part of this through several locations, can you share some of those other locations before the center you have now.
**Lydia:** Yep. So tapestry evolved from an organization called Sartari, which was formed by two people who continue to dance here. It was formed and it was a non, it was a for profit organization. And at the end of the five years that they were not taking any salary and working any money. They worked with some volunteers from mostly from the English country dance community, actually, and to form Tapestry and they, Found a building over in Dinkytown, which is near the university, and they were there for a number of years, and they got kicked out because of the rent increase moved around for a bunch of years then found a home at Sabathony, which is a former school, were there for 10 years.
Again, the rent doubled and the space went, went ahead and have, so we were kind of forced to find a building and have found our home here. And I was just reading an article this morning about, I remember sort of the dates and we found this building. And I think 10 months later, we're dancing in the building.
Wow, raised 350, 000 in that time, and had a little bit of a mortgage and, you know that was paid off in 2018. So we've, you know, we own this building free and clear and it's because of the volunteers here, the staff has sort of been up and down. We now have an amazing staff and I think things are going to change radically in the next few years with this amazing group of, of women who are running the organization now.
**Morgan:** No pressure, Sharisa.
**Sherisa:** Well, but I will, I will echo like this organization exists because of the value volunteers have placed in this community. And we still would not exist were it not for really invested, loyal volunteers who give a lot. And that's something that makes us really unique and special to the level of volunteerism is, is quite extraordinary.
Yeah.
**Morgan:** Awesome. Well, I looked up your mission online. It says the mission of the Tapestry Center is to create opportunities for participation in the joys of dance and music from around the world. So can we dig into that a little bit? How do you work to express that mission and what does it mean to you?
How do you, how do you make it real?
**Sherisa:** So right now we Have 10 programs that are that we host their dances that we host. They right now they happen to be primarily Eastern European based. So from all around the world is something we are still working to realize. But we, but that has been represented in more ways over, over our history for sure.
But we have 10 different forms. Many of them have live music, if not every week, then at least once a month. Some meet once a week, some meet twice a month. You know, they all, they all have different schedules, but these are, these are dances that we host. Within our own organization, so we program them and cover the costs of them all the things, but we also rent our spaces.
And, you know, our rental agreements are contractual and, you know. We're not, we're not running or taking ownership over any of the rental programs that are in our midst, but the diversity of our renters is, is also quite extraordinary and really energizing. And a lot of them have been around for a long time.
We have a lot of long term renters who have been here for over 5 years, some over 10, some over 15. Scottish dancers and karate and Zumba and we've had belly dance and Chinese theater and yeah, many, many different things. And it just becomes a community space and the building becomes a conduit for all of these different cultural expressions.
And you see so many different things happening in the way that's that dance and music become a common language for people all around the world. And it looks a little different. But everyone, every culture has some form of dance and music. And it's really beautiful to see it come together in one space and get to witness.
That
**Morgan:** yeah, that sounds amazing. So what, who are we talking here? Like what types of people do you see participating or what are some of the programs you mentioned several that rent, can you, what about some of your own? I'm just curious, like what, I know Contra Dance in English. You've mentioned those, what else is there?
**Sherisa:** Well, what else is there? We have like tapestry programs. So we have Contra, we have. English country dance. We have international folk dance. We have Nordic, Israeli,
**Lydia:** waltz, ballroom. Ballroom is really taken off every Sunday night. There's ballroom here. They have live music once a month and they're between I would say between 30 and a hundred people that come depending on who's, who's band is playing.
And our numbers are growing. We, during COVID, we had some zoom dancing. So English country dancing met as a social, but then we started dancing on zoom and then we were able to come back. Contra had some social kinds of things and they came back probably last international was doing some zoom dancing.
So people have been dancing, you know, right through COVID and. During COVID, even people were still supporting tapestry. There were the rental organizations. Some of them continue to pay their rent. We did quite well during, we're able to keep our head above water during COVID. So the support is continues all the time.
So,
**Sherisa:** and each and each dance community kind of bring, it has its own, its own niche, its own group of people that come. There's a few people that will go to everything or multiples, but most. Different style has its own, its own following. Contra brings its own people. You see more, I think more intergenerational mix with Contra than you see with some of the other styles. We have a family dance that does once a month before Contra. And so we see a lot of little kiddos in the space. I brought my three year old to that one once when I first started, which was really fun. Nor, you know, Nordic like, pulls from a very specific cultural community and sometimes people outside of that come as well.
But I would say it's, it's more traditional to see people who identify as being Scandinavian.
**Lydia:** We have we have a woman who comes every Saturday night for country dancing. She has three children, all three of them danced in utero. So her daughter is now, I think, seven or eight, and she is almost as good a dancer as many experienced dancers.
So. That's really fun to see. When she pays attention, she's a good dancer. She'd rather play, but he is also a very good dancer. But Frida always dances with somebody on her, on her stomach or her back. So yes,
**Morgan:** that always makes me happy when I see that on the Contra line. I think you're right. It Contra, the generational connection.
That's a big part of why I do it. Yeah, anyway, we could nerd out about that later, but
**Lydia:** both of my kids grew up here and they're both excellent dancers. So you know, it's been a family thing for us.
**Morgan:** Yeah. So for the dances you put on how do you like, where do those come from? How do you select those?
How do you choose what types of groups to include or to start or to
**Sherisa:** put your energy into? Yeah. Yeah, that's a good question. I think it's something that's being refined still over time, how that happens. Because right now, quite frankly, we're kind of full for space. So to take on new programs that we host as an organization would just be difficult because we couldn't offer prime time space unless we changed what we do currently.
But what we have, I think, correct me if I'm wrong, Lydia, but International Folk Dance and Contra. Have been core to tapestry since it started, right? Yeah. English and English country. Yeah. So those three have just, they've just been in effect, like those communities started the organization and they've never gone away.
Other programs have come and gone, you know, like when I said with the audience, kind of each dance is its own community. That's kind of how it still functions. Each, each style of dance, participatory dance, social dance, folk dance, whatever term. You want to use we're starting to lean towards participatory dances to define what we do.
They're run by volunteer committees. And so the volunteer committee decides the instructor to bring in decides the band to bring in. If a band is coming in, and oversee how that dance functions on a weekly basis, and then staff support it, obviously, with marketing and finances and administrative overhead and all that.
So a new program coming in the, the general process is. Some sort of proposal is created from the community or the person interested in running a dance in our space and that is taken to the board of directors and the board of directors considers it in light of mission values. And if we move forward, then there's a set of agreements.
If if a community program, like, a community dance wants to come under tapestries umbrella, then they have to agree to come under our leadership. And be invested in the community at large, and not just their own community. You know, we have just things that we talked through all that kind of relate to all of that.
And if all of those are in alignment. And we, you know, then then we can move forward and instill a new program. We just just initiated our own, like, without an outside. Side community group coming in to request a program. We just are the summer launching what we're calling our tapestry class series recognizing that we don't have space to bring in a lot of different.
Groups, and we can only represent so many styles in an amount of space and time. So this new program that we're starting is giving us structure to such, it gives us the opportunity to offer more variety of styles, but in partnership with other places around the Twin Cities is the goal, but we're kicking off the summer with Cumbia. Some four week lessons in Cumbia which is the Latin style. And as part of, part of that, there'll be recommendations of where you can go to continue dancing around town. That's
**Lydia:** cool. Yeah.
**Sherisa:** And, and then we haven't booked anything else yet, but the idea is then we can do like four to six week sessions of different styles from around the world in partnership with other organizations in the Twin Cities who are teaching this cultural style.
**Morgan:** Sure. So you're the
nexus of it. That's really cool.
**Lydia:** One of the things we're trying to move away from is because some of the organ, the steering committees, which run the different styles of dance are kind of a silo. And we're really trying to work on bringing that silo Out of existence, I guess, in a way, I mean, you still need those steering committees to make things happen.
But every quarter, all of the sort of leads of each of the organization meet together to try to talk about what are our common issues? What are some things we could do together? We, every organization, every steering committee is responsible for finding volunteers to do the opening and closing and admissions for each dance, but how do we overlap?
How do we support each other? And I think that's really hard to overcome because the silos are what make things happen. How do we work together to make the organization to be, have tapestry be the focus, not just Contra Dance or not just English, but how does, how do we make tapestry be the core? And that's, that's been something we've been working on for a while.
**Sherisa:** Really, it's really a nice metaphor too, for the challenge of how, how do we interact cross culturally. Essentially what we're doing, each dance has its own culture, its own audience, its own community, and how do we. How do we create inroads to interact, to mix, to support each other, work together, to collaborate without losing our individual cultural expression?
**Morgan:** I love it so much because this is very much what Zeitgeist Radio and my project here is about, because in musical communities, the same thing happens. I'm classically trained. And I've had many guests on this podcast talk about the silos, you know, we get siloed in the type of training that we have, the type of music that we play, and I think there's a lot of folks out there who want to broaden.
I see you on another silo. I know what you do is cool. And I know you've worked really hard to get there. And I feel like I could maybe do something with you. But I don't know how you got there. So kind of broadening these, you know, just opening these conversations. So even just what you're doing, bringing people together is, that's a huge part of it and understanding, Oh, you still have to sit there in the practice room and practice, you know, I don't, I still have to do the work, but then I can, you know, you struggle with the same things I do.
There's like the sense of camaraderie.
**Lydia:** One of the things we're working on is we have a, once a month, on the fifth Saturday of every month, there's a community contraband. And last Saturday night, apparently there were 25 people sitting in the band area at the contra dance, which brings an incredible amount of energy.
**Morgan:** Yes. And one
**Lydia:** of the people who sort of wrangles that group is also an English country dancer. And we are trying to broaden that. We have one band that plays for English and we're trying to broaden that. So, we've approached her, are there any Contra Dance musicians in that community band who would like to play English Contra Dance music?
And now we're starting to work, developing the band, a different kind of a band for our English Contra Dance. There are, I think, four or six people from that Contra Dance band there may be interested in playing English music. So trying to cross that over and, you know, again, a way to change how the silo works.
Mm hmm.
**Morgan:** That's great. So one thing that was featured all over your website is the history project. Can you tell me what is the history project?
**Lydia:** Well, the history project started I don't know, a couple of years ago. We trying to clean up the office actually is part of what happened, but Another volunteer Sally Gordon and I were having a conversation in the, in the hallway about where did tapestry come from and how do we record that because we're going to be 40 years old pretty soon.
And we have, I know that there are tons of files and tons of information and people are getting older and we better record their stories. So the first part was to take about, I don't know, 25 boxes of files and go through it and toss out things that we didn't need anymore. So. But the other piece of it was to do some interviewing.
And so we had a a man who used to work for StoryCorps, which is the organization in DC that records stories of people all over the country. He came and did a training with I think six of us to do, how do we interview people? What kind of questions do we ask? And then we did a bunch of recordings of people who are important to the organization.
People who, Ed Stern, who, Was one of the Saltari owners and started you know, past Saltari onto tapestry. You know, we, we need to interview him. We interviewed the founding board. We interviewed some people who were critical to the building. So just different people who had a story to tell that we're getting older.
We had a, a member who is the dancer who is now dead, who was in one of the concentration camps. And unfortunately. That Zoom did not work. So we don't have the stories, but he was one of the very beginning international dancers. And when we, we have the information, we just don't have his voice. So we just needed to record what, what has happened over the 40 years of tapestry being around.
And so we still have a lot of work to do. We sort of need to recreate still people to interview. And I think we're going to maybe start doing that this winter. So. It's hard to do that in the summer, but I think we still have, you know, four or five people that need to be interviewed. So that's
**Morgan:** amazing. And then are you keeping this on archives?
Obviously there's a page on your website. Do you have plans for this project other than putting it on the website?
**Lydia:** At this point we don't, I think we need to think about what else do we need to do? We have we're going to try to talk to an archivist from the university of Minnesota to see. Yeah.
What of the paperwork do we need to keep and how do we keep that? Where do we store that? Is that something that the U will keep? Could it go to the history center? You know we're, we're a pretty unique organization. There are a few other organizations that own a building, but you know, our, our trajectory is quite different from most, Organizations that are all volunteer run.
So
**Sherisa:** we're also one of the oldest dance nonprofits in the Twin Cities. And so even just from that standpoint, it's important to document where we've come from and who we are. And so what we do with all of this stuff, I, I, I haven't as a new leader, given a lot of thought to it either, but it's, It's super important to me that we have it and super important to me that we use it in telling our story now and how we think about how we decorate our building even or redecorate our building.
How can we pull elements of our story so that anyone who walks into our physical space can feel like they are a part of this rich history. So there's the important part of just having it. There's a collection for anyone who wants. To discover it, but then also how do we make it living so that we'll understand the breadth of what this organization has been and is still and is becoming when they walk in our doors.
**Lydia:** I think a lot of people don't, don't know about the building. And that to me is a really important part of Where we came from and people come in here and say, Oh, this is a great building. I love dancing on your floor, but they don't know how hard it was to get here. I mean, there were days when we were raising money for this, that Beth and I spent the whole day opening envelopes with money and, so.
Just the work that went into this building. People have a pride who, you know, worked on different parts of the building. Somebody will say, you know, I painted this building or wall, or, you know, I did the tile in the, I did the tile in the women's bathroom. So whenever I walk in the bathroom, I think that's my part of the building.
And yeah, that's being lost as people age out. So the younger people that come don't, don't get that part. And that's, I think a really important part of our history.
**Morgan:** So were you involved with that building? That part of things when they were built, when they were buying the building.
**Lydia:** Oh yeah, I was, I was on staff, so I helped help do some fundraising.
I went to city hall many times to get the parking variance, which was a big pain in the neck. When the new, we, we danced on plywood for the first two years and then we got a big grant and were able to put in us from a floor. And so I helped work on that part of the project. So amazing. Yeah.
**Morgan:** Did you have to can you let's talk about that for a quick second.
So did you have to completely renovate what was the building before and what did you do with it
**Lydia:** building was formed was a Nash distributor. So a car distributor on the front of the building are two embedded in the concrete or two wheels. When we moved in there was an insurance company here there was a paint, like a paint company in the back there was a big paint building.
We had to do a big environmental. Study to make sure there was no environmental hazards here. We bought the building and two days later it was complete. We had to gut the whole building and start from scratch. So there was a big beam in the middle to move heavy equipment from one part of the building to the back.
So that'll have to come out. The floor had to be leveled because the floor had a big drain in the middle of it. All the electrical, all the plumbing had to be redone. So it was our, our board president was actually driving, riding her bike to our board meeting when we had to decide what was our first real discussion.
What are we going to do? And she drove, was riding her bike past this building. The for sale sign was going up. She came inside and said, this is it. It's got to be our building. So we decided, and you know, May we closed in May and we had our first dance in September. So that is fast. It was very fast. We were waiting on the day we had wild asparagus is coming to play for the contra dance.
They were, they were set up. We still didn't have a building occupancy permit. So finally at two o'clock, the fire gave us, we knew we were okay, but the fire marshal hadn't come to give us the official. Okay. Yeah, it sounds stressful.
**Morgan:** Huh. Did you know when you bought the building, how much work would have to be done?
**Lydia:** No.
**Morgan:** Oh, no. We
**Lydia:** thought, oh, no, we take out a few walls and we'll put down a floor and it'll be really easy. And no, which wasn't, but we had 300 hours. He was here every single day. Many people came. Our, our architect was a Scandinavian dancer and he gave, I think, 75 percent of his fee was waived.
For, for this. And we had three people who did all the, all the work, you know, paid people, but lots of, lots of volunteers. Wow. That's, that's pretty incredible. I, the acoustics are really good. We've had HVAC changed several times. I think we have a, probably, you know, as much air coming in 12 times an hour.
I think the air changes over. So. Our building is very safe. I think, knock on wood, we've never had a COVID case here. That's pretty good.
**Morgan:** I had on this podcast, I had Lindsay Dono, who's a Contra Dance Colorado, Seattle, and she has a whole presentation on the HVAC. I don't know if we talked about it on this episode, but in some of the materials she sent me as we were preparing for the episode, there's a whole presentation on the, Like someone did a study on air flow and temperature during a contra dance.
And it's pretty funny. You can see when the waltz break happens, the temperature plummets. And then when the dancing starts back up, it like shoots back up.
**Lydia:** we have a volunteer who's kind of the HVAC expert and he has a CO2 meter on his belt. He manages all of that. He changes the filters and
**Sherisa:** Yeah, he can tell you, like, exactly when the HVACs have to kick in at a higher level during a dance, like, he'll track the exact time, so he probably matches data to that report.
**Morgan:** Probably so, yeah, he might have contributed the data to the report.
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**Morgan:** I hope you're enjoying this conversation with Charissa and Lydia. Don't go anywhere, because we get into some really cool stuff about what is coming up for Tapestry. But I wanted to ask you a favor. If you enjoy Zeitgeist Radio, please follow me on social media. I have a Facebook and an Instagram page.
So please take a quick second, open your social app, Give me a like, I'm especially trying to grow my Instagram. I don't have very many folks following me over there. So if you have an account, I'm at Zeitgeist Academy on both platforms. That's Z E I T G E I S T Academy. Thanks a million. Now let's get back to the interview.
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I'm curious, let's get a little more personal. So personally What brought you to tapestry in the first place?
**Sherisa:** Mine's shorter. I'll let, I'll go first and then let Lydia say you know, I knew about tapestry because I did, I grew up in the Twin Cities and I was a dancer ballet and from the ballet side of things and then branched out beyond that.
Into modern and contemporary and jazz, but I knew about tapestry in high school because my friends would come here for a Thursday night swing dance. And I came a couple times as well. So when I saw the job posting that I applied for last Summer, last fall, whatever it was there was at least that familiarity, like I knew a little, a little bit about the organization, but otherwise a lot of my learning about who tapestry is and has been has come since I was hired and really diving in and getting to know people starting to get to know people, because there's a lot of people who've been here for a long time.
I've only, you know, scratched the surface a little bit still, but but yeah, it's, you know, my backgrounds in dance. And so I, in my work, I'm always drawn to dance organizations and dance where dance is being used to build community and where dance is used to actually make tangible differences in people's lives.
That's, I think why I was. I've spent a lot of work in education spaces. And so tapestry definitely fits the bill on that side for me for personal meaning in my work. Yeah,
**Lydia:** and I'm sure he's a brings that broad spectrum of experience. And I think. Executive directors here to four have been more focused on just what is tapestry now, and Charisse is looking at what can tapestry be, and we, I think organizations always have a cycle, and I think we were at a bottom of a cycle, and now we're really moving up, and we have three other people who work here who are just wonderful people, and we're really going to see some changes happen, and I think that's going to be hard for some people because we need to change.
We need to be more open to things. So my, my story's a little bit different. I, I think when I was in high school or college, I went to a contra dance in my hometown in New Hampshire. And I had such a great time that I ran home three miles in my bare feet. I've never forgotten that. I went to college in Maine and Vermont and I didn't do any dancing at all.
I've played sports, but when I moved to the twin cities in 1986, I knew one person. And. Realized after six months that I better do something to meet people. And I went to my first Contour Dance at the People's Center and didn't talk to anybody, had a wonderful time. Went back the next week, again, didn't really talk to anybody.
And then the third time I went back there was a, a, a man there who had a potluck dinner before a dance in St. Paul, and he invited me to come and I went and started meeting people. And that's my friend group. That's been my for. And almost how long, almost 40 years. So and those people were just so important to me.
And I've, I've done international dancing a little bit. I've done English country. I've been to some country dance weekends. And I just pretty much do English to country dancing and some of those people I've been dancing with for ever, ever since I started dancing here, you know, and that's I've known some of these people a long, long time, so history is really important, you know?
**Morgan:** Yeah. Was tapestry in existence, like, did they put that on that dance that you went to, or were you part of the group that was forming it?
**Lydia:** Oh, no, I was, that dance tapestry had already been in, you know, they started in 83 and I was so three years later. We had lost that first space when we're they were moving around to the People's Center, which is a place on the West Bank.
So, and we are there and then they, we found the place at Sabathony and that was home for 10 years. So, got it.
**Morgan:** Sure you said, do you participate in any of the communities? I, I have,
**Sherisa:** I have, I have tried to come and visit at least each dance once. I've been to a couple twice but I have a newborn and three year old at home.
So most of the time when these dances happen, I'm at home doing bedtime in this season of my life. Yeah.
**Morgan:** That makes sense. You're forgiven.
**Lydia:** I want to say that when Sherisa came, the first thing she did was meet with. Everybody who was important. People who are active here. So people know who she is. I think our former executive directors never did that.
And I think that's made all the difference is that even though she maybe isn't coming to dances, when people, when I say, or someone says her name, Oh yeah, we know who that is. And that's, that's really important. So yeah.
**Morgan:** Yeah, because each one's going to have their own needs and, and their own kind of culture.
It's like microcultures within your little microculture. Yeah, that's amazing. So let's step now outside of you, say there's someone who is interested in coming to a tapestry event has never been before, is maybe a little nervous about going into maybe a friend invited them what can they expect from this experience?
Who's going to be there? Obviously, it depends on what, what group will each group will have their own their own feel. But as far as tapestry, what are some general things that someone who's never been to your center could expect?
**Sherisa:** Well, I mean, you can start like customer journey side of things. Yeah, exactly.
Absolutely. Absolutely. How do you even get to our building? We're very proud. There are lots of access points to get to our building. You can get here on the light rail. You can get here on a bus. You can drive and you have free parking. We're also like, if you live close, a lot of people walk. So physical access.
For one, if you're driving in your car, we have two free parking lots, one right next to the building, one across the street. If those fill up, there's street parking, but come a little early so that you've got it. Sounds like there's a story with
**Morgan:** the parking permit. So thank you to whoever did
**Sherisa:** that. We're, you know, we've got a big red brick.
Building with a green awning. That's how you find us. Sometimes the front door is locked. Even when a dance is happening just for extra security measures because we don't have a security guard on site or anything. We have a doorbell ring the doorbell. Someone will come and let you in and greet you. Once you come in the building, it really depends on what style of dance are you coming to?
Because every dance has its own kind of culture and. Way of running things. We for all of our dancers, we always have someone working in admissions desk. So that is that is across the board. Something that you will come across. You'll come in and you'll find the person at the admissions desk. And if you have questions, you can give them, you know, give them your questions.
They'll be the 1 to take your money. You'll sign a little liability waiver, which just says dancing can be risky. I accept that risk as participating in a dance. And you'll be directed into whichever studio. We have two studio spaces, a small and a large, that your dance is happening. And then you go from there.
And then that is when you really start experiencing the culture of each individual dance style. And that Like your expectations and what, you know, would be different depending on each style and the people and how they welcome you in and how difficult the dance might be to jump in or not varies with each style.
English country is fairly easy to jump into. I think international can be, but can also not be international is a lot of choreographed dances. And so if you're willing to come. To an international folk dance and kind of stand on the edges and just watch everybody else. Then or dance, then it's then it's fine.
You dance behind the line. But if you're not comfortable with that, and that makes you feel a little weird, then like get to know some other people first or see if there's a lesson or the first, the first week. Of our every month is meant to be a more beginner focused for all our dances. So make sure you come that week first so that you aren't as intimidated.
By by some of the styles.
**Lydia:** Well, I think every every dance that we offer has usually teaching at the beginning, even if it's not the beginner focus, but. English country, mostly it's people who have been before. Last night we had dancing and we had one new person. So there was you know, five or 10 minutes of here's the geography.
Here's some of the basic steps and counter dancing always has a lesson for half an hour. International dance. The first hour is a teaching of some different dances and those are done during request dances. Nordic. There's always a lesson. Israeli. There's always, there's always a lesson, even if it's not very long, but.
New people always get a chance to learn how, what are the basic things you need to know for the, for the day on
**Morgan:** time. If you want the lesson.
**Lydia:** Yeah, and we have name tags. So people can wear a name. We encourage people to wear a name tag. And familiarity is a really nice thing. We've member buttons for members.
So I think in including people in the community is a really important thing. We talk about it. At different meetings. So
**Sherisa:** we also have what we call our dancer rights and responsibilities, which you can find on our website. And. You know, we're working on how do we incorporate and live this out in action better and make sure everybody who comes in is aware and also if they have an issue knows who to talk to if they have an issue or just need some support.
But these are a set of agreements that we ask everyone who comes into our space to abide by including renters. We ask them to view them and. You know, transpose them to whatever they're, you know, whatever they're renting the space for apply them in in their own way. And it's. I have a right as a dancer to, to, to these things, and I have a responsibility to these things, and this is how we cultivate a safer environment for everybody to interact.
Can you give
**Morgan:** some really quick examples of what those might be? Oh
**Lydia:** boy. I think it's like being accepting of other people, having the right to say, no, I don't want to dance with you. Mm hmm. And not being someone that ask her not being offended. Being able to say if, if you're uncomfortable with touch I think just being bodily aware of people on both sides of the equation being sensitive to, you know, not wearing perfume, you know, that just trying to be aware of the space.
I think those are some of the basic things, but
**Morgan:** Folks who may not be dancers. It's a big deal to be able to say no.
**Lydia:** Yes. And it
**Morgan:** can feel really awkward. And I know there's been a lot of conversations, at least in the conscious space about really making sure people feel comfortable. And when someone tells, you know, to just not take it personally, it's not a big deal.
**Lydia:** Like
**Morgan:** who
**Lydia:** knows what's going on? Like being, being able to say, you know, I have a bad shoulder, please be careful of my shoulder or, You know, I think just being, being able to say what's important and what's necessary for you to have a good dance experience and, and being able to say that. I think we don't we don't say that enough.
I think new people, somehow we need to be able to say that to new people, like, make sure you look at this little sheet of paper to make sure you know how to, how to behave in this space or how
**Morgan:** you're and how you're supported, right, right, exactly. Yeah. Yeah. If someone is making you feel uncomfortable, what do you do so that the space is not ruined for you and you never come back?
Like, that's not what you want. So you want it to be an open place. Yeah. If there are issues, do they come to you or do they come to the organizers of the,
**Sherisa:** you know, it varies. And this is one of the areas where we have to do a little bit of work so that people have a more clear pathway. Generally it comes to the office.
Because that is the communication, like the, the communication pathway that's most publicly visible. And we say that we welcome that. Send your feedback to staff at tapestryfolkdance. org. And then I, I vet that. And sometimes I'll forward something on to the program organizers to respond. Sometimes I'll respond myself.
Sometimes it's both. Yeah there, you know, there's very few, very large issues in our history, but if there is a larger issue, that is just more sensitive. It goes to the board. Yeah,
**Lydia:** we for our dance weekends. There's usually somebody who's I don't know what they call it like a troubleshooter person.
So, you know, it's announced at the at the week at the concert weekend. We always have somebody if you have an issue, please go to this person. Usually the color of the or the. Person who's instructing is the go to person or the opener. The person who's opening is sometimes responsible enough person that you would go and talk to that person.
If you have an issue at a dance, but generally no, there's not really very many issues. I think they're taking care of that as at the particular dancer, or we've had a few people who were Needed to be reprimanded, but that's very far and few between so
**Morgan:** yeah, well, I love that you have that rights and responsibilities because that I, I just have seen how much work has gone on in the contrast scene about making a more of a safe space, especially for younger people who may not.
Be as good at boundaries or, or anyone, anyone, not, not necessarily just younger folk, but as you, what, with what your organization does, that's so great to have that structure built into the organization so that all of the dances. Everyone is, you know, it's a safe place for everybody. I know how much work that is.
So thank you on behalf of all the answers
**Lydia:** going on in the Contra world, of course, this language and. I know on both coasts gender free language is, is happening here. We're kind of not, not there yet. We, sometimes it's, there's Larks and Ravens but Larks and Robins. Sometimes there's not, mostly there's not.
And I think we're that conversation has been going on for a number of years and some of our callers are not as interested in that. And I think we're hopefully being a little bit more open about it. I think that's, that's slow. Yeah,
**Morgan:** we could probably have an entire episode. I probably will reach out to someone in the community about that.
That, that conversation is fascinating. And yes, yes, that's been a big movement on the West coast. So I want to go back cause you, you mentioned a weekend and I saw on your website as well, that you have special events. So we talked a lot about your regular programming, your regular dances, whether they're weekly or bi weekly.
What are these special events? Can you tell me, like, how do you choose what to program? Who organizes them? What are they? So as an
**Sherisa:** organization, I don't know that Tapestry ever really chose or created these, these came into existence completely at the credit of their individual communities and Tapestry has just been the physical venue for them.
And over time has kind of helped absorb the administrative and marketing functions of them. So we have, right now we have three. They're good. We always be open to more, but it's not necessarily something we're pursuing as an organization. I think we would dress address it. If a community came to have with an idea and chatted to us about it, but we have English country dance weekend, which is coming up the 1st weekend of October.
This year Lydia can speak to that because she's on the committee for planning it. Then we have an international weekend workshop, which is this year going to be the 1st weekend of November. That 1 changes year to year, depending on the instructor they bring in. They try to bring in an international instructor to teach.
A specialty of some kind. So this year, I believe it's going to be Armenian dance will be the focus of the weekend. And then in the spring, we have call of the loon contra dance weekend, which Lydia has also served on the planning committee of.
**Lydia:** Yeah.
**Morgan:** So on those weekends, do you have, do you have to like kick out somebody who like normally would have the dance?
**Sherisa:** We have a, we kind of have an internal agreement with all of our programs. Like the weekend that those happen, we, they either cancel or we try to find them another venue. And that's, you know, our organizationally we cover the cost of that other venue so that they can still hold their own dance just somewhere else in the city.
**Lydia:** Yeah. Yeah. So the, the Contra Dance Weekend, Call of the Loon has been going on. I think this next year will be the 12th year. And that was the brainchild of a couple of people who had been traveling and gone to Contra Dance Weekends and other parts of the world and said, we should be doing this. We should be having fun.
So I think we had wild asparagus, maybe the first year and we've had people from, you know next year. I I think we're having dam beavers coming. I think they're some of them from the West Coast. The English country dance weekend is used to be organized for 40 years was organized by the the country dance co op.
And that was a weekend event that was English and contra dancing. And that organization has kind of gone, they used to do the weekend and then they did the flavored ball in the, in the winter. And that organization is kind of, people aged out, people, you know, couldn't help anymore. So Star of the North has been, I think this will be our third year of doing Star of the North.
So that weekend has sort of been absorbed by the English Country Dance Steering Committee. And then the international dance has been the brainchild of one of the people who's an international dancer, and there's a small committee. Who have done that weekend for years and years. So I think there's, you know, new people come along and help out and kind of get inculcated into that and absorb into the steering committees for that.
But it's done by a volunteer committee. The office has taken on as Teresa said, more of the administrative stuff. They do all the, the registration and the money part and the contracts. As they should, it used to all be done by volunteers, but now it's, you know, there's enough people to help be a little more official.
It's sort of done by the seat of the pants, and I think we're being a little more organized now. That's awesome.
**Morgan:** How many people come through your center in whatever time is meaningful, a week, a month? What would the guess be?
**Sherisa:** So the data we have gathered this year so far, we have. Around 600 unique individuals who come to our dances in a given month.
And now the total, like, who attendance is more than that, because a lot of people come to more than one thing like contra happens every week. And so we'll have a crowd of 60 every single week. You know, we're just counting that 600 number is just 1 individual, but that is our average 600 individuals. And that is not rental inclusive.
That is just tapestry programming.
**Morgan:** Do you ever like just kind of sit and like meditate on the impact this is having? Like everyone comes together, 600 people.
**Sherisa:** There's not a ton of time in my day. Is it ? Maybe not meditate, but do you ever just kind of get like a little over overwhelmed? You take when you When I can take, when I have the luxury of, or just the need to take a step back and think.
Yes. Yeah. And it is important to do that. You do need to, especially as staff, because we, you know, if we're not attending the dances in particular, it's easier to get detached from what's happening. I think the people who attend the dance, their dances, they're seeing it. They're seeing the joy on people's face and they're in it.
They experience it more. When we're working in a business day in the office, we're, we're a little bit more detached, it takes a little more effort to remind yourself of the impact of what is actually going on here. And numbers like numbers like that definitely help. But also getting the testimonials and just taking the moments to pause, to just really acknowledge what it means to people collectively and as individuals.
It's, it's
**Lydia:** important. I think one of the things that's, that's helped the staff, which has never been done before, to my knowledge, is Charissa organized meetings with all the steering committees of all the programs. So the staff, an hour, 11 hours to meet with all their 10 hours to meet with all the programs.
So three or four or five people sat down at this table with all four staff members to talk about what happens. How does it work? What are things that are important to you? What do you need from us? And that I think really helped the staff understand in a different way. What happens when you see the numbers, you see the money that comes through.
You know, that gives you a certain picture, but actually meeting those people, which some, some of the staff members had never met any of those people and, you know, they know their names, but they don't know the people. And I think that has really, that will really help us in the long run to know what happens.
And they, the staff also met with all three steering committees for the program, for the, the weekends. And that just gives a different picture than just. Sort of seeing the numbers come through or getting the complaints or whatever. So, you know,
**Sherisa:** we've been in existence. This is why the history project is so important too.
We've been in existence for four, 40 years and we have very little data to like to measure the impact of those 40 years. We just have stories. Yeah. Right. And so, you know, I'm, I'm working now so that we have data moving forward so that we can say some of those really meaningful like bites, you know, 600 unique people in a given month.
That's a lot of people in a space and, you know, South Minneapolis of this little organization, you know so more, more data like that, that quantifies our impact, but. In the meantime, we have, we have to gather the stories because of our history. We don't have the data, but we have the stories and it's important to, to, to carry them both.
Yeah.
**Morgan:** And dance is story too. Like these, these story, I mean, some of these traditions are hundreds of years old and it's important to these people, like the, the dance is telling us, I know at least a lot of the international dances are telling stories anyway. So these stories, like you're just continuing on.
**Lydia:** One of the things we're trying to do with the history project Sally, the other volunteer and I, for the first 10 years, she went through all of our calendars for the first 10 years and wrote down who taught, how many times it met you know just all the information about each dance that happened every month.
And so she could say this one person taught international dance 102 times. I'm going to do the same thing with rental. What happens over the last 40 years of rentals? We've had. You know, we've had African Chinese. We had belly dancing. We've had you know, all kinds of different dances that have happened, but nobody knows about that.
So that's another. And it's, it takes a lot of time to look at each contract. How many times were they here? What did we know? What was it? And. But that's important information to have. So that'll be my winter project here.
**Morgan:** It sounds like a very exciting time for you guys. What do you wish community, the outside world, people knew about community spaces like this?
**Sherisa:** We talked about this a little bit last week. I think one of the things, because you had prepped us with this question. One, I think one is it takes work. It doesn't just happen overnight. Like community spaces like this that are so run still very much run by the community. There's four of us staff and we're all part time.
So there is a lot that is still carried by the volunteer community. No doubt. But that takes that level of investment takes care and it takes time to develop and consistency and the people who are willing to engage in that work. And the face that we've had a lot of conversations about how the face of volunteerism is changing with the generations.
And that's something that we have to address and figure out as an organization, because how this community is shaped. Moving forward is going to need to look a little different just because volunteerism is changing both as a value and it's just as a capacity. Yeah. Younger generation. So how do we continue to have.
The level of community investment that we have that we're volunteering is not the path to making it necessarily. I don't have an answer to that, but but work, it's work. It's investment is people who are willing to have difficult conversations and to push forward to something better together and to work together to find a vision that we can agree on so that we can work on it together.
It's living out the dancer rights and responsibilities. Types of things so that we know how to offer respect to one another.
**Lydia:** I think if you look at the age of all our volunteers are all like, you know, gray hair, like me, and we need to think about how that's going to look different and people who have been around for a long time, don't want that to be different.
But I think we, we, we have no choice. And I think that's, that's one of the difficult conversations that I think the board is trying to address that. But again, the board is a lot of people who have been around a long time. And I think there are a couple of new people on the board now who are willing to think about that a little bit.
There are people on the board who don't want to think about that too. So, you know, that's kind of a constant struggle. And how do we bring young people in when, when they're not? If you're not willing to change the language, how do you bring young people into the country? If you're not willing to look at things from a different point of view.
And I think people are starting to realize that they need to do that. And that's, to me, that's really exciting. And the willingness to, to think about change and, and that's, that's hard. Yeah. Mm.
**Morgan:** It's very exciting. Like I said, exciting time for you right now. Yeah. My final, I, I have one more question. I ask every guest this cause I think it's so, I love just, I just love hearing what, what comes up for people.
Do you guys know what the word zeitgeist means?
So it's a German, German word means spirit of the times, and it refers to kind of the feeling spirit, like, like the feeling of, of any particular culture or moment. There's a spirit, there's a zeitgeist of today. And then you picture this, you know, what it felt like to be alive in the nineties or the seventies, very different spirit of the times.
And this also applies, I think, to microcultures. So, you know, within a smaller. A smaller community, what is the spirit of it? And I think that's basically what you guys do is facilitate all these little zeitgeists to thrive. So there's a term that I don't know what other word to, you know, I didn't, I didn't know of a word for it.
So I made one a zeitgeist moment where you're doing something, whether you're dancing or playing music or listening to music or watching something. And you just, we all have that moment where we connect to something higher than ourselves, bigger than ourselves. We connect to the community in a very meaningful way.
I call that a zeitgeist moment. So I'm going to ask each of you what was either a recent or a memorable zeitgeist moment for you. I'll go first so that you can kind of think about it a little bit. The zeitgeist moment I wanted to share with you I went to college in St. Paul right across the river and I grew up contra dancing.
I I was eight when I started. And we went to this little dance in Montana every single month. It was just monthly. And it was. It was just the most fun. I looked forward to it every month. And then I went to college, it's kind of harder to get around off campus if you don't have a car. And I just was craving, I was like, I gotta go dancing.
And so I remember going to tapestry, was a poor college student. Hadn't gone dancing in forever. And it was my first out of state dance experience. I'd never danced. With that many people, like our little dance in Helena, Montana was probably 20 people every week. You'd have one line and sometimes three or four sets and that's it.
And I was, my mind was blown at how many people were there, but also it was the first time I, I kept seeing faces that looked familiar and I didn't know any of these people, but being in that in that environment and. You'll probably understand like concert dancers kind of look the same everywhere.
And I kept being like, wait, do I know you? Do I know you? Do I know you? Because I just suddenly felt very much at home and it was feeling like this, this. Piece of me that I was craving at that moment. And that was the first time I'd ever felt that. I now know that that's common everywhere I go. I'm like, wait, do I know you?
Have I danced with you before? Sometimes the answer is yes. Sometimes the answer is no, but that was the first, that was memorable to me that evening, because that was the first time that, that I had ever expanded that community and yet found it was the same. It was the same community. So that's, that's the one I wanted to share with you.
I'd be interested in each of yours.
**Lydia:** Totally understand that. I think for me I have, maybe I have them quite a lot is when I'm dancing and I remember vividly this happening at maybe 10 years ago on the, on the contra dance floor when there was, you know, the right music and the right dance. And I just get into the flow and I think I am so happy that happened last night.
There was a dance we did last night and it was recorded music and. You know, the dance was going well and I didn't make any mistakes and I just getting into the flow and just feeling like this is so right, you know, I actually like my husband right now. You know, just being in the flow of the dance and not worrying about what anybody thinks or what else is around me.
It's just, it's almost like not even noticing what's around me. And I don't find that very many other places, you know, it's just, it's just. Very, very special. So I've been doing it for a long time and it's still fresh when it happens. So
**Sherisa:** when I get asked similar questions, I have one story. That's just kind of my go to story because it's just stuck with me for a number of years.
And one of my first positions out of, out of college was with an organization that did a training, an international training program that ultimately used dance as cultural exchange. And so, you know, students would come and train for a while together, but then we would go we would travel. And so we did I did a trip to London during the summer of the Olympics and worked with a neighborhood in, in the neighborhood that the Olympics were at of the Olympic Stadium.
And there was a community Group of churches, and I think other organizations that put on an arts festival during for the neighborhood during the Olympics, and they had a screening room where you could come and watch the sports. But then there was all sorts of activities happening around it. And so we assisted with this festival.
And 1 day, we just gave. Like put on some music and just had some dancers out there just showing just doing like follow along simple moves to the music for everyone should just kind of have a joyful moment and we had toddlers toddling around this church grass and we like 80 year old men trying to do high kicks.
At one point people twirling and it was just the most beautiful example. Of how dance and music can transcend so many, so many boundaries. Like it, it can, it's, you don't need language. It is, there is a language of its own and it's a way people can connect on just apart from anything. And it was just one of the most joyful experience, like joyful connected experience with a bunch of strangers of all different ages of different races in this little neighborhood in London. But yeah, it's just always that it's, that's, that's why I love dance. That's why I love the arts is because of that ability to connect people across and no matter what. Yeah.
**Morgan:** Wow. That's amazing. Well, Sharisa and Lydia, thank you so much for coming on my podcast. so much for having us. It was
**Lydia:** a good conversation.
Thanks for tuning in to this episode of Zeitgeist Radio. If you'd like to take the next step in your musical journey, head over to zeitgeistacademy. com slash radio to join my newsletter. Seriously. It's fun and informative, and I never spam or sell your information. That's zeitgeistacademy. com slash radio.
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