St. Joseph Newspress Story: November 12, 2009
Larry Liebig considered it an act of appeasement, though with very specific conditions. His wife and a couple of friends had been after the state trooper to try square dancing. He gave in, making a wet-blanket pronouncement as the couples got into the car for their dance date in Excelsior Springs. It was 1968. Mr. Liebig remembers it like this: “We’re going to take this lesson, we’re coming home and I don’t want to hear another thing about square dancing.”
Skip ahead to the next day. The trooper, with zeal of the converted, inquired of a supervisor if he might have off the next dozen Wednesday nights, to continue the lessons. Skip ahead 41 years. Another night among square dancers. In the basement of Oak Christian Church near Amity, Mo., eight couples take their places, two squares worth. They wait to practice a centuries-old folk art whose heart-healthy endorsements come from modern medical associations. On television shows of current popularity, dancers wear spangled clothing and spend weeks in the tango studio. This isn’t that. The attire is mostly denim, and participant movements are extemporized. Square dancing is to choreography what improvisation is to a comedy routine.
Mr. Liebig holds the microphone, ready with the call. He puts the needle to a record (yes, vinyl lives here) and sets 16 people through their paces. Dosado, swing thru, cross run, spin-the-top ...The caller has done this 29 years, the craft hard-won in civic centers and school gyms, with experienced dancers and novices.... left thru, slide thru, touch quarter ...This night, in the country church he attends, Mr. Liebig gives lessons. He loves the instruction, loves to pass along his enthusiasm. He recalls earlier days in calling, getting help and microphone time from older hands, dancers patient with his education. “They would critique me ... sometimes very hard,” he remembers, laughing.
Growing up in St. Joseph, Mr. Liebig took a job with the Missouri State Highway Patrol and worked in Troop H all of his 28 years as a trooper. Away from the job, he filled evenings with square dance calls, branching out to more distant locales after his going through rudimentary steps, lettretirement in 1994. The alcohol-free dances provide family-based recreation, he says, not to mention the fellowship. Square dancing enjoys an egalitarian following, with truck drivers and bankers, farmers and ministers on the floor at the same time. “It’s a leveler. If you have a lot of money or you don’t have a lot of money, it doesn’t matter,” says Kathy Liebig, the caller’s wife, adding, “There really aren’t very many grouches.”
Along with the tutelage of elders in the discipline, Mr. Liebig went to a week-long caller’s college in Arkansas in the 1970s. For the first level of square dancing, there are 69 necessary movements, an inventory he unveils slowly to new pupils. No need to intimidate them all at once. By the end of the first lesson, he has students going through rudimentary steps, letting the dance sell itself. Steppers listen for their next cue. If the dancing requires concentration, the calling requires anticipation. Mr. Liebig must be two beats ahead of the feet on the floor. “The challenge for me as a caller is to know what call to call next to get them where you want to get them,” he says, noting a game interplay that develops with those experienced in the art. “If the dancers really want to have a good time, that gets the caller cranked up, too.”
His dance clubs include the T-Squares in Trenton, the Wranglers in Maysville and the Spinnin Wheels in Higginsville. In winter months, he and Kathy head to Texas where he calls and teaches. One stretch last month found them in Auburn, Neb., on Thursday night, in Iowa City, Iowa, on Friday night, and in Macon, Mo., on Saturday night. Mr. Liebig, 65, admits to “too much windshield time.” Though his calendar has engagements now into 2012, he wants to scale back the travel. “We’re to the point now that we’re starting to pull that big outer circle in,” he says. Not that he will get out entirely. Last year, a Missouri square dance federation named Mr. Liebig to its Caller Hall of Fame. The Northwest Missouri area is blessed with good callers, Chris Wildhagen and Larry Fitzpatrick among them. New blood would help, he says, a younger generation. Mr. Liebig instructs the couples, the newcomers and more seasoned “angels,” in a movement called Trade By, reminding them of the traffic geometry of passing with the right shoulder. As he begins his call, the New Balance shoe on his right foot taps the time, the keenness for a craft still evident.
