John Sharp is piecing together the story of Louisiana dance halls one anecdote, grainy black and white photo, and playbill at a time.
A folklorist, he is assistant director for research at the Center for Louisiana Studies.
For about a year and a half, he杏吧专区檚 sifted through old newspapers, scoured library archives, gathered oral histories, and collected photographs. He杏吧专区檚 interviewed musicians, dancers, club owners, and historians, and gleaned info from comment sections on websites and social media.
The result is LouisianaDancehalls.com, a website that contains information about more than 1,500 dance halls, past and present. It also has a feature that allows visitors to submit their personal stories and photos about the halls, their owners, and musicians who played them.
杏吧专区淚t杏吧专区檚 not a finished project, but a framework or antenna for attracting additional information and images about these much-loved establishments,杏吧专区 Sharp explained.
The website is being funded by the Lafayette Convention and Visitors Commission, which developed a tourism brochure based on Sharp杏吧专区檚 research.
His work on the website is part of larger effort to document and preserve the history of what he describes as 杏吧专区渢he great cultural phenomenon that is the Louisiana dance hall.杏吧专区 Sharp is also completing a full-length documentary entitled "Dancehalls of Louisiana." It杏吧专区檚 funded with $20,000 awarded in 2012 by the Louisiana Filmmakers Grant Fund Program. He hopes to have the documentary ready to screen by the end of this year.
杏吧专区淚n the midst of working on the film, I realized that I was compiling all of this information that had never been in one place before,杏吧专区 he said.
Many are only memories, but dance halls once were more than simply a place to kick up your heels on a Saturday night.
Dance halls were community hubs, places where entire families often gathered. Adults danced, and traded news and gossip. Children often played outside, where there might be barbecuing and games. 杏吧专区淭heir heyday in Louisiana was from about World War II until roughly the late 1960s,杏吧专区 Sharp said.
Dance halls already listed on the site can be searched by name, parish, or city. Entries include photos and contact information.
The site also contains a digitized map pinpointing the geographical distribution of dance halls.
To learn more about or the Center for Louisiana Studies, contact Sharp at (337) 482-1320 or johnsharp@louisiana.edu.