![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.bemidjistate.edu\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/3\/2018\/07\/BSUMag-v35n01-06-dance-follies-04-277x300.jpg\")
<\/a>“My purpose in changing the name was that it should be fun for the dancers to do and a lot of fun for the audience to watch, kind of a funtastic experience for everybody,” she said.<\/span><\/p>\nThe name change, along with square dance and social dance numbers that Hunt had introduced, helped the program grow. It also helped that football coach Chet Anderson taught square dancing and encouraged his players to participate.<\/span><\/p>\nMale and female athletes from hockey, swimming, diving and other sports trained with Christianson to learn new physical skills. <\/span><\/p>\nGroups across campus also took part, and students from individual residence halls teamed up to prepare dance numbers. <\/span><\/p>\nSuzy Langhout remembers one year when all the resident assistants were in the show. They raced back and forth between numbers so someone would always be on duty, but it didn’t quite work out.<\/span><\/p>\n“One group didn’t get back in time for the other group to get there,” she said. “Oh, they were mad. They missed their beach number.”<\/span><\/p>\nMiscues and mishaps are part of Dance Follies lore -— from theft of a reel-to-reel recorder that contained music for an entire show during the Hunt years, to electrical overload in Memorial Hall that almost kept one of Christianson’s shows in the dark, to a dancer getting stuck in an Elmo costume under Langhout’s watch. But always, the show has gone on.<\/span><\/p>\nRoutines have celebrated popular culture and cultural heritage. Through the decades, audiences were exposed to dances from Ukraine to Tonga. They reflected such trends as disco in the 1970s, country line dancing in the ’80s and hip-hop in the ’90s.<\/span><\/p>\nIn recent years, one fashion that’s new again is swing dancing. Members of BSU’s Swing Dance Team provide a strong foundation for the Follies through their group and audience participation numbers, with help from the Ballroom Club and BSU Dance and Cheer teams.<\/span><\/p>\nLanghout and her husband, who goes by the nickname “Hondo,” provide professional guidance to these groups outside the two-week window when the Follies come to life. <\/span><\/p>\n“We have been able to add some more technical dances,” Suzy said. “We’re doing tougher stuff than we’ve ever done.”<\/span><\/p>\nThe couple, who operate the Suzy & Hondo School of Dance in Bemidji, say the students’ range of experience strengthens the program: Beginners learn and more skilled dancers have a place to perform.<\/span><\/p>\nThough some productions have showcased highly trained dancers, the Langhouts said Funtastic Dance Follies have always been about community.<\/span><\/p>\nAs Christianson said, “Anybody can be in it. There are no restrictions — even if they haven’t had a single dance class and they just become a part of it because it looks like fun. Come to the practices, we’ll work with you.”<\/span><\/p>\n
\nWritten by Maryhelen Chadwick<\/span><\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A <\/span>cherished 74-year Bemidji State University tradition began inauspiciously as a student dance performance assigned to a new physical education instructor.<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":32601,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[958],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-32593","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-magazine"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bemidjistate.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/32593","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bemidjistate.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bemidjistate.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bemidjistate.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bemidjistate.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=32593"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/www.bemidjistate.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/32593\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":32613,"href":"https:\/\/www.bemidjistate.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/32593\/revisions\/32613"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bemidjistate.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/32601"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bemidjistate.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=32593"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bemidjistate.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=32593"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bemidjistate.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=32593"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
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