Appalshop Grounds
Saturday, June 9th at 9 PM
Admission: Free
Experience Kentucky’s longest continuing community square dance at Seedtime on the Cumberland! The Carcassonne Community Square Dance will hold it’s June dance under the main stage tent on the Appalshop Grounds during this year’s festival.
The Carcassonne Community Center was built as the Carcassonne School in 1924. After a fire destroyed the original structure, it was rebuilt in it’s current form in 1931. It functioned as a school for the students of Letcher County, Kentucky until the 1960′s and on a limited basis into the seventies. It is famous for it’s quilting club and The Carcassonne Square Dance, the longest continuous community square dance in Kentucky. Set somewhat in-between Hazard and Whitesburg, the old school building that houses the center lies in a secluded area amid hills and trees in Letcher County. It features the best old-time musicians Kentucky has to offer as well as food and hospitality for attendees learning and performing traditional square dance.
People from the community of Carcassonne have danced at several Kentucky Folklife Festivals and were featured on the Mall in Washington, D.C. at the 2003 Smithsonian Folklife Festival.
Enjoy this film produced by local students Matthew Baily, T.J. Boggs, and Chasity Watts for Appalshop’s Appalachian Media Institute.
Castle of the Mountains: The Carcassonne Community Center
…and this original music video by Appalshop filmmaker Herb E. Smith, filmed at the Carcassonne Community Center.
Whoa Mule
Today I was sitting in a doctor’s office and picked up a copy of the September “Kentucky Monthly.” I so enjoyed the article about square dancing at the Carcassonne Community Center that I wrote down all the information, came home and looked it up on the Internet. I was born in 1948 about two miles up the river from Blackey. We moved to Louisville in 1960 when I was 12 years old, which broke my heart. The mountains were a part of me, and the last thing I wanted to do was leave them. My parents, Earl Hogg and Willie Mae Hogg, have now gone to Heaven, but my brother (Sonny) and sister (Anna Jo) both live here in the Louisville area. I will share this video with them.
What a stroll down memory lane. God bless you all who still live there. And God bless you for making this video available online.