Community Arts & Traditional Arts

"God put me on this earth... to put more men out on the dance floor."


	Cynthia Larock enjoys teaching step dancing to both youth and adults.

For someone who once considered herself a non-dancer, Lewiston's Cynthia Larock has done well. Since 1996, Larock has been studying the art of Franco step dancing. For several years, she apprenticed under master step dancer Benoit Bourque and is now taking on apprentices of her own. She says she used to be afraid of dancing; but when she was introduced to contradancing, she discovered she wasn't a total klutz.

When she first started attending contradances, she found that the music she most enjoyed dancing to was the French Canadian dance music.

"I can't help it. The music makes me want to dance," said Larock.

Not surprisingly, Larock now finds herself working with two members of the band Boreal Tordu, which specializes in Acadian and Quebecois music. Portland Fiddler Steve Mues and drummer Ron Bonnevie, of Farmington, have been apprenticing with Larock, learning Franco step dancing techniques.

"It's more and more a piece of what we do," said Bonnevie. "The music that we play is representative of our Franco-American background in a typical soirée in a French home. Somebody would be playing the bones, someone would be playing the fiddle and someone would be playing the spoons. I just thought it would be a nice addition to what we do."

In his family, Bonnevie is the only member of his generation that speaks French fluently. None of his brothers speak the language.

"If I didn't speak French — if I didn't carry that on — there would be a hole in my family," said Bonnevie.


	Ron Bonnevie, a member of the Acadian band Boreal Tordu, at his home in Farmington.

Mues says his family didn't have a lot of great dancers, but they were great music makers. Mues' grandfather lived on an island off the coast of Nova Scotia. When he was hired to play his fiddle for a dance, he rowed to the mainland.

Mues' face lights up as he talks of exploring the rhythms in Acadian, Cajun and Quebecois music.

"Being Acadian, we didn't really have a lot of Québec influence in our music. When I started hearing Québec music, I freaked out, and that's what caused me to want to learn French," Bonnevie said. "And as for the dancing - the rhythms - it's a whole new instrument when it's done by a body."

For the past few years, Larock has been teaching younger dancers. She likes the idea of investing in young people that may not be aware of their own cultural roots. It is a way for them to feel their kinship to their Canadian heritage.

The only thing she likes better than dancing herself, is teaching it. She is also continuing to learn along the way. As she listens to music written and played by Mues, she discovers the sound of the dance steps is actually in the music.

Mues and Bonnevie aren't the first adult men Larock has coaxed onto the dance floor.

"God put me on this earth to put more men out on the dance floor," she said. "Women, too - girls already like to dance and if I can make young men willing to try it... then they're not gonna say 'I don't dance.' In the back of their minds they're going to remember that they did it, and it was fun," says Larock.