About Rhythm & Roots

Our Mission

Rhythm & Roots Marketing is a nonprofit organization dedicated to revitalizing square dance clubs by promoting their activities and classes through the communication channels people rely on today.  We utilize user-friendly websites optimized for online searches, email campaigns, and social media interaction to attract and engage a younger, tech-savvy audience. By aligning traditional square dancing with contemporary marketing, we aim to ensure its legacy endures for future generations.

Our Story

Rhythm & Roots Marketing was born out of close friendships that developed in the Belaire Square Cats square dance club in Bowie, Maryland. Hal Barnes was the club caller for the group for 20 years – from 1995 to 2015. Nancy Morrissey and Allan Dansie were co-presidents for a while during that period. Club members were active in many leadership roles in the local festivals. Eva Murray, a local caller, and her husband Tom danced at the club. Eva taught lessons for Village Swingers club in Maryland. Her expertise in systems and social media provided a perfect background for successful marketing for the classes, resulting in many large classes.

In 2015 Hal and Elaine retired and moved back to the Colorado mountains. Tom and Eva moved to Raleigh, North Carolina. However, we all kept in touch. Hal and Elaine made an annual trip to Philadelphia to see family and visited the DC area to see friends and call a dance for the Belaire Square Cats. At that dance in 2024, Allan approached Hal with an idea. He explained that square dancing had really enhanced his quality of life for many years. He wanted to find a way to give back to square dancing. But he asked Hal to figure out just how to do that.

COVID had a hard impact on square dance clubs. Most clubs were forced to shut down for an extended period and many dancers did not return. Hal reasoned that the best support we could give to dancing was to help clubs get more students in the lessons. This translated into helping clubs with their image through social media and improved marketing of their classes. Most clubs do not have the expertise in-house to do either of these jobs well. Our strategy is to organize a group of professional social media and marketing folks who are also intimately familiar with square dancing who could then offer their services to clubs for their new dancer classes. We are not aware of any similar service in the square dance scene today.

We recognized that we needed a variety of skills to make this idea work:

Hal reached out to dancer friends with proven marketing and technical skills, recruiting Eva as Project Manager. Allan reached out to dancer friends with club management and problem-solving skills with the vision of helping clubs. Soon we had a group of six who together covered the required skills. Hal’s daughter Stephanie, a marketing professional, coined the Rhythm & Roots Marketing name. We decided that we would learn a lot from a couple of initial trial projects. Leslie, a technical lead, headed up the initial class marketing project in a small town. Deanna, a project lead, headed up the next project of improving social media and class marketing for an urban club. The results of our initial work are encouraging as the work made a difference.

Rhythm & Roots is a charitable organization, and donations are tax deductible. Donations go directly to clubs for the purpose of building membership. We are partnering with two national dance organizations to identify clubs who could benefit from our work. Together, we have a group with a broad range of dance, leadership, marketing, and technical skills who have a passion to help square dance clubs.