“Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world; indeed, it’s the only thing that ever has.”
Margaret Mead
“Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world; indeed, it’s the only thing that ever has.”
Margaret Mead
Changing minds, one dance at a time
Take Hands tells a small town story that has a big current relevance—a story of how music and dance can unite people across cultural divides. The film follows Stacy Rose and the South Coast Folk Society as they organize a week-long celebration of traditional American music and contra dancing in rural Coos Bay, Oregon. Stacy wants everyone at the dance, no matter their skills or their politics. She wants a dance week that will bring people together and perhaps change a town.
A Film by Doug Plummer
For more than 35 years Seattle photographer and filmmaker Doug Plummer has documented America’s centuries-old dance tradition, contra dance, in big cities and small towns. Take Hands grew from this passion, as he became inspired by the ambition of the Folk Week event organizers to make a difference in their rural community.
Watch Take Hands
Take Hands | A film by Doug Plummer
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ABOUT
What if a dance could change a town?
Take Hands tells the story of Stacy Rose as she crosses social and political divides to bring the tiny community of Coos Bay, on Oregon’s South Coast, together through dance.
Stacy and her wife Gail, a lesbian couple living in a rural Oregon coastal town, are determined to use dance to overcome the community’s sometimes stark differences. She wins funding from a national arts group—the Country Dance and Song Society—and uses it to invite renowned musicians and a respected dance caller from the East Coast to visit Coos Bay for the town’s first Dance Week. At the same time, she prepares local dancers and musicians from the contra dance community to take advantage of this once-in-a-lifetime opportunity. She joins the town’s more conservative square dance community to learn their approach to folk dancing and to create a bridge to her more politically liberal contra dance scene.
The film captures the ups and downs of Stacy’s ambitious journey. It culminates in the dance week itself and documents the transformations that take place among the dancers, the musicians, the local dance callers, and even the town’s high school students.
There are missed notes and mis-steps along the way, but in the end, Stacy succeeds.
“If you want to get enough people to make something happen,” one town resident says. “You have to accept your neighbors, because they’re interested in doing the same thing you are and that’s what draws us together.”
Key folks at the heart of Take Hands
STACY ROSE AND GAIL ELBER are the couple at the heart of the contra dance and music scene in Coos Bay. Stacy arrived in Coos Bay in the early 1980s, and met Gail in 2006. Stacy, a folk dance teacher and choreographer, becomes the key organizer of the Folk Week residency project. The film follows Stacy as she works to connect the traditional club square dance folks and the new contra crowd and reaches out to the more conservative members of their community.
PAT COX is a lifetime resident of Coos Bay, and is leader in the traditional square dance community, Saints n’Aints, in Coos Bay. His dancers are a distinctly different crowd from the contra dance scene, primarily older folks with deep roots in the community. There had been very little interaction between the two dance communities until Stacy Rose reached out to Pat to bridge the gap.
BOB DALSEMER is the dance caller brought in from North Carolina to call dances at the Coos Bay Folk Week—and to teach members of the community how to teach and call contras themselves. Internationally renowned for research and teaching, Bob is an expert in both traditional square dances from West Virginia and Maryland and contra dances.
FIREFLY is the North Carolina old-time band brought to Coos Bay for Folk Week. The band is made up of two mother-daughter pairs, Julia Weatherford and Pearl Shirley, and Barbara Davis and Laurel Willoughby, who play traditional old-time and Appalachian music. Barbara Davis passed away in 2017.
THE COUNTRY DANCE AND SONG SOCIETY (CDSS) connects and supports people in building and sustaining vibrant communities through participatory dance, music and song traditions that have roots in English and North American culture. Their 2015 grant allowed Coos Bay to create a new model to bring these traditions to more people.
“A contra dance is like an amusement park ride we make for ourselves.”
—Gary Shapiro
CREW
Dedicated to inspire you and share hope
Doug Plummer
Producer, Director, Camera
Doug Plummer has been a freelance commercial and fine art photographer for four decades. As a long-time social dancer and musician, he has documented the contra dance scene nationwide over the decades in both still and video. His work has played a key role in advancing the work of regional and national organizations in promoting music, dance and cultural continuity. He served on the board of the Country Dance and Song Society from 2015 to 2021.
Sandy Jeglum
Editor
Sandy Jeglum is a video editor and documentary filmmaker with over a decade of experience creating short and feature-length documentaries, branded content for non-profit organizations, and content for digital media. Driven by the power of storytelling to expand perceptions and promote social change, Sandy loves contributing to projects that encourage a more equitable world. Her editing projects include Crazywise (2017), Headhunt Revisited (2017) and her own short film, Concerning Contraception (2019). You can see more of her work at sandyjeglum.com.
Francine Strickwerda
Story Consultant
Francine Strickwerda is an award-winning director, writer and producer of documentary films. She co-directed the feature film Oil & Water for PBS, as well as Busting Out, a feature documentary about the history and politics of America’s obsession with the female breast, which aired on Showtime. Her new feature doc, Ultimate Citizen(s), will be released in 2021.
From The Heart Productions
Fiscal Sponsor
From the Heart Productions is dedicated to helping independent filmmakers with unique films that make a contribution to society get their films funded.