In 2019, Maria Chen left her marketing job in San Diego and bought a one-way ticket to Caribou City, Idaho. She had no job lined up, no family in the area, and no guarantee of housing. What she did have was a growing obsession with square dancing—and a tip from her caller back home that Caribou City was "the place to go if you actually wanted to get good."
Chen is not alone. Over the past decade, this town of roughly 6,000 people has become an unlikely destination for serious square dancers from California and beyond. Workshop attendance records from the Caribou Square Dance Foundation show that out-of-state participants have doubled since 2014, with Californians now making up roughly 30 percent of advanced clinic enrollments. The question is why a state with no shortage of dance studios and sunny weather is sending its dancers to a former logging town in the northern Rockies.
A Brief History of Caribou City's Dance Scene
Caribou City's square dance reputation dates back to 1978, when the town hosted the first annual Mountain Music Jamboree, a festival that drew top callers from across the Pacific Northwest. By the mid-1980s, local clubs had developed a distinct regional style: faster tempos, more complex choreography, and an emphasis on live fiddle-and-guitar accompaniment rather than recorded music.
That legacy is still visible today. The Caribou Square Dance Academy, founded in 1982 by caller and former competitive dancer Earl Vance, sits in a converted grain elevator on the edge of downtown. Vance, now 74, still teaches three advanced classes per week. The academy's enrollment hovers around 120 students, with roughly 40 percent coming from outside Idaho.
"We don't do hobby dancing here," Vance said in a recent interview. "If you want to socialize and get some exercise, there's plenty of places for that. If you want to understand why a figure works, how to recover when the call goes sideways, how to make it look effortless—that's what we teach."
What the Training Actually Looks Like
The academy's curriculum is divided into four levels: Mainstream, Plus, Advanced, and Challenge. Students progress through structured 12-week terms, with written evaluations at the end of each cycle. Vance and his two co-instructors, both former national competition finalists, require students to pass both a practical dancing exam and a written test on call definitions and timing.
For California dancers accustomed to more casual club environments, the intensity can be jarring.
"I showed up thinking I was pretty good," said Chen, now in her fourth year at the academy. "I'd been dancing in San Diego for six years. Earl put me in Plus level for my first term. It was humbling. They were counting beats, analyzing foot placement, talking about 'frame' the way ballroom dancers do. I'd never heard any of that."
The Northern Lights Dance Studio, located in a former church basement three blocks from the academy, offers a different but complementary experience. Founded in 2001 by instructor and choreographer Paula Hensley, the studio focuses on team performance and competitive preparation. Its 16-member competition team, the Caribou Cutters, has placed in the top three at the National Square Dance Convention for five consecutive years.
Hensley's approach emphasizes the social mechanics of dancing as much as technical skill.
"Square dancing fails if four people aren't cooperating," Hensley said. "We run exercises where one dancer is blindfolded, where the music changes tempo mid-figure, where you have to switch partners without breaking the square. It builds a kind of trust you don't get from drills alone."
The California Connection
The pipeline from California to Caribou City has no single origin, but several factors have sharpened it in recent years. First, several prominent California callers retired or reduced their teaching schedules during the pandemic, leaving experienced dancers searching for advanced instruction. Second, the rise of remote work made relocation feasible for dancers like Chen who no longer needed to stay near urban offices.
Perhaps more importantly, California's square dance community has skewed older and more recreationally focused in recent decades, according to data from the California Square Dance Council. Advanced and Challenge-level clubs have contracted in major metro areas, while Caribou City's specialized training has become easier to discover through online forums and social media.
Logistically, the move is not simple. Caribou City has no commercial airport. Most California arrivals fly into Boise or Spokane and drive three to four hours. Housing is limited; several dancers rent rooms in the homes of local club members. Winter temperatures regularly drop below zero, a shock for coastal transplants.
"It's not a vacation," said Derek Okonkwo, a former software engineer from Oakland who moved to Caribou City in 2021. "The first winter, I genuinely wondered if I'd made a terrible mistake. But the dancing kept me here. In California, I was one
