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When my aunt dragged me to my first square dance in McRoberts City, I went reluctantly, jeans and all. I figured I'd put in an hour, smile politely, and escape. That was six years ago. I still have the bruised toes to prove it — and I've never missed a Thursday night since.
Square dancing doesn't announce itself. It sneaks up on you. One minute you're standing at the edge of the hall watching strangers promenade like they've known each other forever, and the next you're spinning through a dos-a-dos with a retired coal miner who speaks entirely in calls. Something clicks. You realize this isn't a dance. It's a whole way of being with people.
If you're in McRoberts City and curious about what I mean, here's where to start.
McRoberts Square Dance Academy
Walk through the doors of the McRoberts Square Dance Academy on a Tuesday evening and you'll hear it before you see it — the shuffle and stomp of boots on hardwood, laughter breaking between calls. The academy sits in a converted gymnasium downtown, the kind of place that still has a scorer's table and the faint ghost of a basketball court under the polish.
Instructors here aren't the formal, clipboard-carrying type. Most of them learned to dance the same way you're about to — by showing up and fumbling through. Lead instructor Delores Hargrove, who's been calling squares for thirty-one years, has a way of breaking down even the most tangled sequence into something that feels doable. I watched her walk a ten-year-old and a seventy-three-year-old through the same swing sequence in the same class, same patience, same humor.
The academy runs beginner sessions on Monday and Wednesday evenings. Advanced callers practice Fridays, but you're welcome to watch — and honestly, watching Delores throw a curveball call at a practiced group is half the education.
They also host a monthly dance night that's open to everyone, students or not. The last one I attended had a potluck table that stretched halfway across the hall. Nobody was there to perform. Everyone was there to be together.
Bluegrass Square Dance Center
The Bluegrass Center has one rule above all others: leave your ego at the door. That philosophy shows in everything they do.
The facility itself is modest — fluorescent lights, folding chairs during the week, a wooden floor that's been refinished more times than anyone can count. But modesty is part of the charm. Walk in on a Saturday afternoon and you might find a toddler swaying in the corner while her grandparents swing, teenagers laughing through a workshop, and a couple in their eighties who clearly consider this their second home.
Owner and lead instructor Marcus Pike started Bluegrass after his daughter asked him, at age eleven, why kids in McRoberts City didn't have anywhere fun to dance with their parents. He built the center around that idea — family first. Every month they run a "Family Square Night" where kids under twelve attend free and parents get a discounted rate. The energy in those sessions is something else. Chaos, sure. But the good kind.
The annual Bluegrass Festival every September draws dancers from three counties. I've been twice. The first year I couldn't tell a weave from a wheel. By the second, I was doing it without thinking — and crying a little during the closing dance, if I'm honest, because something about sixty people moving as one hits different.
Appalachian Square Dance Institute
This is the place for people who want to understand where square dancing actually comes from.
The Appalachian Institute operates out of a stone building on the north end of town that used to be a general store. Inside, the walls are covered with photographs of dancers from the 1940s and 1950s, Appalachian musician lineage charts, and old posters from gatherings that predate the internet by several generations.
Founder Beatrix Caudill doesn't teach square dancing the way a gym teaches a sport. She teaches it the way a grandmother teaches a recipe — with context, with story, with the understanding that the steps carry history in them.
"The calls aren't arbitrary," she told me during my first visit. "Every promenade, every swing, every docie around — that's how people in these mountains used to talk to each other before they had phones. You're not just moving. You're speaking."
Workshops here run six weeks at a time, each one focused on a different regional style — Southern Appalachian, Kentucky mountain, Blue Ridge variations. You won't just learn the steps. You'll learn why they matter. Advanced students have the option to participate in field research trips, documenting dance traditions in surrounding communities. It's rigorous, it's academic, and somehow it still feels like a Saturday night.
Riverfront Square Dance Club
Summer in McRoberts City means the Riverfront Club's outdoor series.
Picture it: the sun dropping behind the hills, string lights strung between old oak trees, the sound of the river mixing with a live band. You and a hundred other people in your best square dancing boots, spinning under an open sky. It's one of those experiences that sounds cheesy until you're actually doing it.
The club started as a casual gathering of locals who'd meet at the riverbank on warm evenings. It grew. Now they have a proper deck built over the water, a PA system, and a rotating roster of callers from across the region. The dancing leans more contemporary here — more pop music, more modern choreography — but the core call patterns remain. You get the best of both worlds.
What I love most about Riverfront is that it attracts people who'd never set foot in a formal studio. Young professionals, hikers who happened to be in town, tourists who wandered over from a nearby brewery. The crowd is eclectic, which means nobody's watching you too closely. You can try things, fall, try again.
Their open dances run every first and third Saturday from May through September. Arrive early enough to grab a spot near the river. Watch the light go down. Then dance.
Harmony Square Dance Studio
Harmony is the most deliberately welcoming space in McRoberts City, and I mean that structurally, not as a compliment.
The studio is fully wheelchair accessible. They offer sensory-friendly sessions for dancers with autism and other sensory processing needs. Their senior program pairs older adults with younger dance partners specifically to build intergenerational connection. If you've ever felt like a dance studio wasn't built for someone like you, Harmony was built for you.
Instructor group leader Tonya Brewer puts it simply: "Everybody moves. That's the whole thing. We just make sure there's room."
Classes here are small — capped at twelve students — which means you actually get attention. During my first session at Harmony, I couldn't get the concept of weight transfer through a turn to save my life. Tonya didn't repeat the same instruction. She changed her approach entirely, used a metaphor about carrying a cup of coffee without spilling it, and suddenly it worked. That kind of adaptability is rare.
Open dance nights happen monthly and are exactly what they sound like — casual, drop-in friendly, no commitment required. You can show up, dance for thirty minutes, and leave. Or stay the whole night. Nobody's tracking.
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McRoberts City isn't a big town. Drive through it in thirty seconds and you've seen the main street. But something happens here on Thursday nights and Saturday evenings and Sunday afternoons that you can't find on a city map. The dancing goes deep. The people are patient. The floors are worn smooth by decades of boots doing exactly what your boots are about to do.
Go. Show up. Let your aunt drag you if you have to — I promise you'll end up staying longer than you planned.
And if nobody's there yet to spin you through that first swing? Find me at the McRoberts Square Dance Academy on a Tuesday. I'll introduce you around.
