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The Night the Caller Changed Everything
The first time Marcie Wheeler called "allemande left" at the Natalbany Dance Emporium, I didn't know left from right. Stand there, confused, watching eight strangers spin past me like water around a drain. My wife squeezed my hand and whispered, "Just follow the guy in front of you—he's been dancing for thirty years."
That was three years ago. Last month, I led my first tip at a local festival. My voice cracked on "zoom," but something clicked. Eight dancers swung their partners, promenaded twice, and I realized: I'd found something I never knew I was looking for.
This is the thing about square dancing in Natalbany. It doesn't feel like a hobby. It feels like joining a family you didn't know existed.
More Than a Dance Studio
Forget what you picture when someone says "dance studio." The Natalbany Dance Emporium sits on a quiet street off Highway 51, looking from the outside like an old textile warehouse. But push through those double doors and you can almost feel the history vibrating through the hardwood floors.
On any given Tuesday night, you'll find everyone from a retired steelworker who'd never danced a step before retirement to a twenty-two-year-old kindergarten teacher who discovered square dancing on TikTok and thought it looked "weird in the best way."
The Emporium isn't fancy. The mirrors are slightly crooked, the water cooler has been unreliable since 2019, and the lights in Studio B flicker when it rains. But the caller booth—raised up in the corner like a lighthouse—gets occupied by people like Marcie, who learned to call in the 1970s and still remember every word to "Grand Square."
"We don't teach people to dance," its owner, Doug Comeaux, told me once. "We teach them to listen. The dance is just what happens when people learn to listen to each other."
Learning to Fall (and Get Back Up)
My wife and I started with the Beginner's Bliss program. Six weeks, every Thursday, learning basic movements in a room that smelled like floor wax and determination.
The first week, I stepped on her foot twice. The second week, I forgot the difference between a do-si-do and a dosado. By the third week, I was confidently wrong more often than I was hesitantly right.
Here's what the instructors understood that I didn't: square dancing isn't about perfection. It's about commitment. Your partner is depending on you to move in the same direction at the same time. Mess up? You mess up together. The whole square crashes, everyone laughs, and you start again.
The trainers at the Natalbany hubs get this. They don't correct you into the ground—they build you back up. "Mistakes are just the dance telling you it needs more practice," one caller told our class. "Listen to it."
The Festival That Brings Everyone Back
Once a year, in early spring, the Natalbany Square Dance Festival takes over the civic center and three neighboring hotels. Dancers drive in from Texas, Arkansas, Mississippi—some who've been coming for forty years, others taking their very first road trip as a square.
It's chaotic. It's loud. The dress code is "anything with sparkles," and nobody takes itself too seriously. At last year's festival, I watched a seventy-eight-year-old cemer strike up a conversation with a seventeen-year-old college freshman, comparing call styles like they were talking about different brands of pickup trucks.
The competitions happen, sure. The trophies get handed out. But that's not why people come. They come for the moment when the music starts, when eight people who didn't know each other an hour ago become a square—moving together, breathing together, laughing when they mess up together.
So What's the Catch?
There's no catch. That's the beautiful thing. You show up. You learn the basics. You make mistakes. You keep coming back.
The training hubs in Natalbany—yes, there are multiple now, spread across the city, from the Emporium to church basements to the VFW hall on the north side—are holding something together. A tradition. A community. A way of being with other people that doesn't require a screen or a subscription or a perfect body.
My wife asked me last week if I ever imagined we'd be here. Square dancing. In Louisiana. Dragging ourselves to the dance floor every week like our grandparents did.
I told her I couldn't imagine not being here.
If you've been thinking about trying something new—if you've got two left feet and don't care—this is your sign. Nobody's judging. Everyone's learning. The music's already playing.
All you have to do is show up.
