http://rutlandherald.com/article/20140428/NEWS02/704289933
Springfield Apple Blossom Cotillion directors Lisa Rushton, left, and Tammy Farmer, right, lead students in rehearsals for this week’s 58th annual local hospital fundraiser. Photo: Kevin O’Connor / Staff PhotoPublished April 28, 2014 in the Rutland Herald Old hands show Springfield cotillion new steps Editor’s note: This story is part of a periodic series exploring the evolution of Vermont’s only continuing cotillion. By Kevin O’Connor Staff Writer After leading four months of rehearsals, Springfield Apple Blossom Cotillion directors Tammy Farmer and Lisa Rushton are dragging like zombies. Juggling lives as wives, mothers and working women, the two had full dance cards before they signed up to guide 14 teenage couples through week upon week of practice. But watch the way their arms and legs now fall to the floor and you may wonder if they’ll make it to the finish. Then again, Michael Jackson fans will recognize their tribulations as anything but tired, as the stylized sluggishness morphs into the namesake finale of this weekend’s “A Thriller Evening.” Springfield High School students have welcomed spring with the state’s oldest and only continuing cotillion since 1957. But the nearly six-decade tradition carries on thanks to the unseen efforts of a backstage crawling with spirited community volunteers. Rushton was a cotillion dancer in 1980 when she asked a boy she was dating to join her. “His friend said, ‘Just do it — it’s not like you’re going to marry the girl.’” Except that he did, and went on to have three daughters — two who, like generations of girls here, have followed in their mother’s, sister’s, aunt’s or cousin’s high-heeled footsteps. Larry Kraft discovered the dance’s history upon his hiring as Springfield Hospital’s director of foundation and charitable giving. “If people don’t know what our cotillion is,” he says, “I have to dissuade them of the viewpoint it’s a debutante ball.” True, when a local woman named Harriet Lindley launched the event as a hospital fundraiser, she suggested high school girls be “introduced to the community,” the official history says, “on the arm of a prominent businessman from the area.” But much has changed in this Windsor County hub of 9,373. Once it was known as the town that Charles Lindbergh chose as his Vermont stop on a tour celebrating his transatlantic flight of 1927. Then it was known as the place whose three major machine-tool plants helped make so many World War II weapons they were ranked as some of the country’s most likely bombing targets. Now, with all that a memory, it’s a town with a more prosperous past than present. But the cotillion, having replaced Rotarians with their sons, has grown into a moneymaker, paying for such things as a blood-bank refrigerator in 1961, physical-therapy whirlpool chair in 1983, childbirth-center bed in 2000 and, with the nearly 2,000 tickets set to be sold Friday and Saturday, $15,000 for scholarships this year. “It also has become a community tradition,” Kraft says, “and, for the girls, a rite of passage like the prom.” Back at the start, students waltzed, tangoed and foxtrotted to show tunes. Now they step, snap, spin and shoulder roll to more contemporary music. (“’Cause this is thriller!/Thriller night!/Girl, I can thrill you more/Than any ghost would ever dare try …”) Even so, students still wear matching ball gowns and tuxedos for a standing-room-only show that ends with the crowning of an Apple Blossom Queen. “I wouldn’t say it has changed a lot,” Rushton says. “Just being a part of it — singing and dancing and having fun — is still a big deal.” Unlike her fellow director, Farmer isn’t a native. She grew up in Texas, where she and her classmates performed in “show choir.” (Think “Glee,” y’all.) But like Rushton, she cites the same reason for volunteering: “It’s a lot of work, but I enjoy it.” The two directors began choosing music and choreography as soon as last spring’s event concluded and have met several hours a week throughout the winter. They are assisted by at least a dozen other volunteers who help manage equipment, wardrobe and 40 elementary-school backup dancers. The cotillion is set for Friday and Saturday at 7:30 p.m. at Riverside Middle School, with opening-night tickets $10 in advance and $12 at the door and crowning-ceremony tickets $15 in advance and $18 at the door. “The choreography is done,” Farmer says, “so now it’s just making sure the lines are straight and everyone is on the same beat.” That means rehearsals that have run every Sunday from 2 to 4 p.m. will ramp up this week to every night from 6 to 9 p.m., giving the directors plenty more time to fall — and rise — like zombies. “It’s giving back to our town and just fun to be a part of, and the kids make you feel young again,” Rushton says. “There’s not a whole lot left that has been here for 58 years. It’s pretty amazing this is.”
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