Location: 1525 Newton St. NW

Readers’ pick: Kiki

As Bill Hader’s “Saturday Night Live” character Stefon would put it, the District’s hottest club is a square dancing extravaganza in an episcopal church. 

The D.C. Square Dance Collective, a volunteer group of self-described “music and dance lovers,” has been throwing dances in Columbia Heights’ St. Stephen and the Incarnation Episcopal Church and other venues across the DMV area since 2011. Today, when the collective sets up shop at the church, dancers criss-cross and spin beneath the sanctuary’s cream-colored arches as a folk band plucks out jaunty tunes on string instruments below the altar’s crucifix. 

Square dancing is a form of American folk dancing that draws influences from Scottish, Irish, English, French, West African and Native American traditions. A typical square dance consists of couples gathering in a square formation and following a sequence of steps announced by the “caller,” who directs the dancers along to the live music. 

Bradley Kennedy, one of the collective’s original organizers and a current caller and dancer, said her passion for square dancing started more than 15 years ago, when she and her roommates would throw jam-packed house parties when they lived on the border of Northeast D.C. in Maryland.

Local dancers and musicians would flock to the parties, as one of her roommates was a well-connected fiddle player, and they eventually started calling square dances in their living and dining rooms during the gatherings, she said. 

“They were really popular, and they were so crowded, like you couldn’t really move,” Kennedy said. “So it seemed like people were pretty into it. We were like, ‘Maybe we should get a bigger space.’”

For their first official dance, Kennedy said the collective of musicians, dancers and callers settled on throwing at St. Stephen’s as many of their friends lived in Mount Pleasant, the neighborhood that borders the church. She said the church also offered the most affordable price and was known for being “extremely community oriented.” 

But right before the first dance was set to kick off, they learned that St. Stephen’s had accidentally double-booked their small backroom, Kennedy said.

She said the church staff instead allowed them to host the dance in the sanctuary and move the rows of wooden pews to clear space for the stepping, spinning and do-si-doing. 

“We used to have to move these big, huge, heavy antique pews, wooden pews,” Kennedy said. “Then they remodeled the church in 2016, and they replaced the old pews with these chairs that are way easier to move.”

Kennedy said more than 200 people showed up to dance at St. Stephen’s after they advertised the event via Facebook — a turnout that could never have fit in the church’s little backroom. The acoustics are “pretty bad,” and they have to provide their own sound equipment, but the collective has continued to host most of their dances in the sanctuary because of the space’s “beautiful” architecture and affordable price compared to other D.C. venues, she said.

“We love that space,” Kennedy said. “It’s such a cool, unique space, and it’s also extremely affordable compared to other venues of that size in D.C. and pretty relaxed as well.”

Kennedy said the collective usually goes for a “party vibe” with their dances, whether in St. Stephen’s or their annual summer dance in Rock Creek Park. 

She said attendees — who range from families with young kids to 30-somethings to older square dancers — can decide if they want to dance or hang out with their friends on the sidelines and jam out to the music. 

“One time, someone who was at the dance told me, ‘This is the most fun that human beings can have,’” Kennedy said. “She was like, ‘You could spend any amount of money to go to any fancy party or show or drugs or anything. You could not spend any amount of money to have as much fun as people are having right here.’”