Area Dance Halls Welcoming Back Dancers
Lavaca County, long known as a center for dancing to all genres, proved itself this last weekend, the 27th and 28th of March. The area is blessed with two active dance halls, Blase’s Hall and Sweet Home Community Center, and Pavlas’ Tavern in Moulton which has an outside dance area.
The fun started Saturday afternoon at Blase’s Hall, operated by the Konvicka family for generations, where Blue Denim attracted a record crowd. Later that evening in the back yard of Pavlas’ Tavern in downtown Moulton, the Ennis Czech Boys were definitely not “A Ja Sam” (alone) as a large crowd filled the yard and adjacent areas for some good Czech music. While the folks were dancing under the full moon, the Sweet Home Community Center was alive and well as a record crowd filled the center to near capacity to hear Southpaw celebrate their CD release.
Early Sunday afternoon, Blase’s Hall was the scene of the first full blown polka gathering in the area since a year ago. The Czechaholics and Dujka Brothers teamed up to entertain a crowd from across the state, some traveling hundreds of miles from as far away as San Angelo and Ennis. The Dujka Brothers kicked off the dance and the floor was immediately filled with dancers. The Czechaholics took charge of the second set and set the energy level high and the dancing pace was furious with the bands alternating sets for the rest of the afternoon. John Dujka remarked from the stage that the swirling dancers looked like “poetry in motion”. With the absence of music elsewhere, there was a large group of musicians in the crowd that climbed the stage to join in the All Star Jam session with the two bands to conclude the dance. Five hours of dancing sent the record crowd (even larger than the day before) home, happy but exhausted. Starting later that Sunday afternoon, Texas 361 from Victoria played to a respectable crowd at the Sweet Home Community Center whose floor was still hot from the night before.
The Texas Polka News interviewed the hall owners and tallied up over 1,000 folks who danced their shoes off this last weekend in a twenty-mile triangle of Lavaca County. The newspaper observed quite a boost to the local economy and a large quantity of smiles.