Dane Dances Starts Its 26th Season on the Monona Terrace Rooftop : Warm Nights, Hot Music and Cool Commun
Dane Dances board members — and volunteers — Fabiola Hamdan (l-r), Al Cooper and Diane Michalski Turner
by Jonathan Gramling
When the Mayor’s Taskforce on Race Relations issued its recommendations back in 1999, little did anyone expect that it would be Dane Dances — still on the Monona Terrace Rooftop — would be the only recommendation that is still going strong 26 years later. It’s the combination of Warm Nights, Hot Music and Cool Community, on some level, the only time that this community gathers together each year.
“From the very beginning, Dane Dances was created to bring the whole community together and not leave anyone out,” said Al Cooper, the chair of Dane Dances. “Whether you could afford to go out or not, Dane Dances was about making it as accessible as humanely possible for everyone to be there. We negotiated with Monona Terrace to make sure that people could bring their own food and water and non-alcoholic drinks. Early on, we also needed to negotiate having ethnic food vendors. We always felt that food, music and dance were a great combination for people to come together and celebrate not only their differences, but also their commonality as well. Too often we focus on how we differ, but we don’t realize how much we have in common with each other until we are able to sit down and socialize and participate in an activity together. every year, we try to give people something to celebrate and think about. It’s a celebration to be in a community like Madison. Often there are people who say, ‘Well Madison isn’t this and it isn’t that.’ We try not to focus on what it isn’t. We try to focus on what it is and what it can be.
And it are those special qualities of Dane Dances that draws people to it.
“I serve on Dane Dances because I feel that we live in a community that really enjoys being together in community events,” said Fabiola Hamdan, a board member. “I like to do that, especially in the summer. For me personally, I enjoy gathering ion a family-friendly space where we have music. We have food and dancing. I really love dance. As you know, I was in Tiawanacu, the Bolivian dance group for many, many years. I think dancing, music and food is really a way to connect the community together. Why not, given this opportunity that we have with this beautiful Monona Terrace and volunteers to do this type of event. It’s a signature event that really represents Madison.”
And no matter which way you look at it, Dane Dances is diverse.
“I have always been interested in cultural diversity and shared humanity,” said Diane Michalski Turner, another board member. “The diversity does attract me. I come from an immigrant background. I grew up speaking English and Polish. At one time, my mother and I were on a bus in Chicago. And a woman turned around and said to us, ‘This is America. Speak English.’ And I thought, ‘Why?’ I was eight-years-old. And I was just appalled by that. ‘Why can’t I be an American and speak more than one language?’ That really set me on the course for being interested in and respectful of other cultures and languages. Dane Dances is like a natural fit for me.”
Dane Dances is a time where every Friday night in August, several thousand people gather to dance, listen to music, eat and enjoy each other’s company.
“Coming together as a community in a friendly-family atmosphere and having a couple of hours and forgetting all of the stuff that goes on in our country and the world is important,” Hamdan emphasized. “Having a nice time with the community is important.”
While Dane Dances always has an free and easy feel about it, it takes a lot of hard work and commitment to pull off a major production every week for a month.
“It is a major production,” Cooper said. “It involves work year round. You have to do fundraising and debriefing from the season before, do final reports and wrap up the grants that you have received as well as the responses and information we receive on what the season was like and how the money was spent. We want people to know that their contribution was well worth the giving and supporting a worthy cause.
You have to prove yourself every year. And almost every day, you have to continue to prove yourself. Otherwise you get complacent and you don’t move forward. I have a saying where every year, I tell people it’s the best line-up yet. And it’s true because each year, I work with our band committee to improve on the presentation that we give to the community.”
Each night, Dane Dances starts out at 5:30 p.m. with DJ Francis Medrano who not only keeps the energy level high with the music he plays, but he also gives line dance instruction.
“He does a good job of entertaining and engaging the crowd and takes them through some dance steps,” Cooper said. “Everyone feels that they can do the line dance. He also engages crowd participation. We tried different formulas of DJs and we came upon this three years ago and we’re sticking with him for the present because it seems to work for us. Line dancing gets everyone on the dance floor, even the people who don’t know it. With the dance instructor, they feel even more comfortable getting on the dance floor with someone walking them through the steps. We’ve been doing line dances since the beginning of Dane Dances. People love the line dances. This year, there is a new line dance sweeping the country called Boots on the Ground. We hope people will learn Boots on the Ground. Our dance instructor will walk people through it. I hope we can have 3,000 people on the Rooftop doing Boots on the Ground at the same time.”
At 6 p.m., the first band performs followed by a DJ-led intermission followed by the second band which performs until 9:30. And when people aren’t rocking to the music, there is plenty of ethnic foods to enjoy.
“We have Lake Vista Cafe from Monona Terrace,” Cooper said. “We have La Taguara, a Venezuelan food vendor. And we have Melly Mel’s Catering with home-cooking soul food and Kipps Kitchen with some soul food and home cooking.”
Dane Dances would not be diverse if it wasn’t diverse at the heart of what they do: the bands. Every night’s line-up is different.
“For the opening week, we have Sangamam,” Cooper said. “It’s an East Indian group. It’s the first time that we’ve had an East Indian group at Dane Dances in our 26 years. That’s going to be a very interesting introduction of their music to our audience. I hope everyone comes out and checks it out. Last year — on two different nights — we had East Indian dancers perform for 5-7 minutes. Hopefully this year we’ll have dance movements that the audience can pick up. That will be a cultural awakening for us as well. And then we have Madison’s funk dance band, VO5. This should be a great opening night.
“The second week, we have Orquesta SalSoul de Mad, which is one of Dane Dances’ longstanding bands as well, playing Latin and Fusion music. And then we have another first-time band to Dane Dances — one of five first-time bands this year — Soul 2 the Bone. They are out of Chicago. They are a rhythm and blues band that plays a variety of music. Everyone should be able to find something that they enjoy, if not all of it. They are a great band.
“The third week we open with a band that is fairly new to Madison, but they are very good. It’s there third year at Dane Dances, but they haven’t been together here in Madison too long. They are made up of members from all over South America. They are called Rebulu Group. They play Latin music. They are very good and very danceable music. Also new to Dane Dances is Love Monkeys. That is a band out of Milwaukee that plays rock and reggae, a variety of music. They draw a big crowd and people love them.
“The fourth week, we have La Obra, a Latin group out of the Chicago area. They are very, very good, high energy and very entertaining. They do a very good job of keeping people engaged and active on the dance floor. With them is SOS Motown Review Band. They do a lot of Motown music. They are a combination of several different bands coming together to put on the Motown review. They are great.
“And then we close out the season with a couple of bands from the Milwaukee area. We start with V-Funk, which is a rhythm and blues funk band, which does a very good job with dance music. And then we have Montage who played last year. They are a very good R&B, Pop band out of Waukesha.”
Come out to Dane Dances and be a part of a Cool Community that enjoys Warm Nights by the lake and dances to some Hot Music. It’s a winning combination.