The Glenview Squares Remain In Rhythm After A Pandemic Shift

GLENVIEW, IL — The Glenview Squares dance club is 100 members strong, but never before in the organization’s 70-year history has its ability to remain in step been tested like it has been over the past year.

Like many other groups, the Glenview-based dance club was affected immensely by the coronavirus pandemic. The Glenview Squares were set to celebrate seven decades of existence last May before the pandemic forced the group to shift from in-person gatherings to get-togethers that were forced to be moved to a video conferencing planform and other virtual settings.

Now, a year later, the Glenview Squares will be part of a Glenview Public Library Memory project that looks back at how the pandemic impacted community life, the group announced last week.

“We had all worked so hard over the years to build a sense of community through square dancing,” Glenview Squares President Janice Cha said in a news release. “We were not about to sit back and allow the pandemic to devastate our club.”

Like with other aspects of a mostly Zoom existence, the way the Glenview Squares conducted their business changed dramatically. Rather than eight pairs of in-person dancers performing calls of a designated dance leader, sets of one or two dancers interacted with “phantom dancers” in a virtual setting, Cha said.

To stay connected, members of the group attended social activities like virtual performances at the Oil Lamp Theater in Glenview, game nights, online holiday dances and socially distanced square dances that took places in a church parking lot in nearby Morton Grove.

While members of the group will share their experiences from the past year as part of the library’s Memory project, the Glenview Squares are looking forward to again establishing some sense of normalcy, the group said. By September, the group hopes to start up in-person gatherings, dances, and lessons, which will be offered through the Glenview Park District.

But through everything that has happened over the past 14 months, the group has a simple message to its community.

“We’re still here,” Cha said.