Marie writes: We are Marie and Alcide Thibodeaux. I am 63 and he is 66, we live outside a little town between Lafayette and Eunice that you have not heard of, and every Saturday night for the last forty-three years, with time off for babies and one hip, we have gone dancing. Alcide asked me to dance at a fais do-do in 1956 when I was twenty and he was twenty-three and had just come home from the Army, and I said yes because my sister dared me, and we have been going around the floor counterclockwise ever since.

Alcide writes: She says yes because her sister dared her. I say yes because I was the best-looking man in the hall. Both of these are true.

Marie: Our granddaughter set this page up for us at Easter, because people we meet at the halls, tourists mostly, from Texas and up north and once from Germany, always ask the same three questions: how do you do that step, where should we go, and what do we wear. So here it is all written down. We are not teachers and we do not give lessons. We are just two people who have done this every week for a long time and are willing to explain it.

Alcide: I give lessons. Ask me at the hall. First one is free.

Marie: He does not give lessons.

First thing to know: there are about as many ways to do the Cajun two-step as there are dance halls, and every one of them is right in its own hall. What we describe here is the way Alcide's mother taught it in her kitchen, which is the plain old-fashioned way, and it will get you around any floor in Acadiana without anybody looking at you funny.

The music: A two-step is in 4/4 time, four beats to the measure, and the band plays it at a good clip. Tap your foot; you'll feel the 1-2-3-4.

The position: Closed position, like a waltz. His right hand on her back below the shoulder blade, her left hand on his shoulder, his left and her right hands joined out to the side about shoulder height. Not too close, not too far. Alcide says: hold her like you're carrying a pot of gumbo, firm but you don't want to spill it.

The basic step (this is over two measures, eight counts):

So it goes step, step, step, touch; step, step, step, touch. Say it out loud. That's it. That's the whole thing. Alcide's mother used to say "un, deux, trois, et" and slap the table.

Now the important part: you don't go in a straight line. The whole floor moves counterclockwise around the room, and the couple turns as it goes, a little on every step, so that over eight counts you've gone about halfway around each other and moved a few feet down the floor. He leads the turn with his right hand and his frame; she follows it. Start by just walking the step in a straight line in the kitchen till your feet know it. Then start turning. It takes a Saturday or two.

Marie says: Keep your feet close to the floor. This is not a polka; nobody hops. Small steps, smooth, like you're sliding on a waxed floor, which you often are.

Alcide says: And don't look at your feet. They'll still be there. Look at her.

Every Cajun band plays about half two-steps and half waltzes, and the waltzes are the pretty ones, the ones with the sad words about somebody leaving. If you only learn one dance, some people say learn the waltz, because it's slower and there's more room to hide a mistake.

The music: 3/4 time, three beats to the measure. ONE-two-three, ONE-two-three. The first beat is the strong one, and that's the one you take the big step on.

The step: Same closed position. He steps forward on the left on ONE (a longer step), then right on two, then left on three (two smaller steps, almost in place). Then forward right on ONE, left on two, right on three. She mirrors him going backward. That's all there is: long, short, short; long, short, short. The couple travels counterclockwise around the floor and turns slowly as it goes, the same as the two-step but easier.

What makes it Cajun and not a ballroom waltz: No rising up on your toes and sinking down. The old ballroom waltz goes up and down like a boat; the Cajun waltz stays flat and glides. Feet close to the floor, knees soft. It's smooth, it's a little slow, and a good couple looks like they're standing still and the room is going around them.

Marie says: This is the dance we were dancing when he asked me to marry him, in 1957, and I stepped on his foot and said yes anyway.

Alcide says: It still hurts a little when it rains.

A dance hall on a Saturday night has two hundred people on the floor, and the only reason nobody gets hurt is that everybody knows the rules. Nobody will tell you these. They'll just look at you. So here they are.

1. The floor goes counterclockwise. Always. Everybody. If you're going the other way, you're the problem.
2. Fast dancers on the outside, slow dancers on the inside. The outside lane is for the couples who really move. If you're learning, stay toward the middle. Nobody minds a beginner in the middle. Everybody minds a beginner in the fast lane.
3. Don't cut across the floor while a song is playing. Walk around the edge. If you have to get to the other side, wait for the song to end.
4. Ask nicely, and it's fine to ask a stranger. That's what the halls are for. Men ask women, mostly, but in the old halls it's not unusual the other way and nobody thinks a thing of it. "Would you like to dance?" That's the whole sentence.
5. It's one dance. When the song ends, you say thank you, you walk her back to where you found her, and that's that. If you want to dance with her again, ask again later. Don't hang on.
6. "No, thank you" is a complete answer and it doesn't need a reason. And if you're the one who said no, you don't get up with the next fellow for that same song. That's just mean.
7. No drinks on the floor. Leave it on the table.
8. Nobody teaches on the floor. If you want to show somebody a step, take them off to the side. Standing in the middle of the floor counting out loud is how you get run over.
9. Married couples dance with other people. This surprises the tourists. Alcide dances with half the ladies in the parish over the course of a night and I dance with their husbands, and then we dance the last waltz together, and that's how it's always been. It's a community, not a date.
10. Tip the band. There's a jar. They're playing four hours for not very much money and they're the reason you're there.

Shoes are the only thing that matters. You want a smooth sole, leather or something like it, so you can turn. Rubber soles grab the floor and will twist your knee. Ladies, a little heel is fine but not a tall one; you're going to be on your feet for three hours. Men, boots are traditional and leather-soled boots are perfect, but a good pair of dress shoes is just as right. Sneakers are wrong. Sandals are wrong and dangerous.

Otherwise: It's a dance hall, not a wedding. Men wear jeans or slacks and a shirt with a collar, pressed, and a lot of the older men wear a hat and take it off inside. Women wear a skirt or a dress that moves, because it's prettier when you turn, or nice jeans. Nobody is going to send you home for what you have on. But you will notice that the people who can really dance dress like they meant to come.

Bring a handkerchief. It's Louisiana, the halls are warm, and you are going to sweat. Alcide carries two.

Tourists ask this every time, and a lot of people down here will give you a long answer with feeling in it. Here's the short one.

Cajun music comes from the French-speaking Acadian people, the white farmers and trappers whose families came down from Canada two hundred and some years ago. The main instruments are the accordion (the little button kind, in one key), the fiddle, the guitar, and in the dance-hall bands a steel guitar and drums. It's sung in Cajun French. The songs are two-steps and waltzes, and the waltzes are sad. That's what plays in the halls on this page.

Zydeco comes from the black Creole people of the same part of Louisiana, who speak the same French, more or less, and share a lot of the same old songs. But zydeco took in the blues and rhythm and blues, and it moves different. The accordion is usually the bigger piano-key kind or a three-row button box, there's a rubboard (a corrugated metal vest you play with spoons or bottle openers, called a frottoir), electric bass and drums, and usually no fiddle. It's faster, it's harder-driving, and the dancing is more of a shuffle than a two-step, with a lot of couples doing their own thing. Zydeco has its own halls and its own crowd, and the young people go more to those.

Both are wonderful. They are cousins, not the same thing, and if you call a Cajun band a zydeco band, or the other way around, somebody will correct you, kindly, at length. We dance mostly to Cajun bands because that's our music and our step, but we'll go hear zydeco when somebody good is playing and Alcide will try to two-step to it and I will pretend I'm not with him.

These are the halls we go to regularly. All of them have a live band, a wood floor, a bar, and a lot of people over sixty who will dance you into the ground. Bands change week to week, so we don't list them; go and see. Cover is usually a few dollars.

This Saturday, September 25: Guidry's. Look for the fellow in the white hat who thinks he's the best-looking man in the hall. I'll be the one shaking her head.

Fall is festival season, and the festivals are where you get to dance outdoors, in daylight, to three or four bands in a row, with a plate of boudin in one hand. The big one for us is Festivals Acadiens in Lafayette, which is every September in the park and is free, with music going on two stages all weekend, and a crafts fair and a food tent that will feed you till you can't dance. We went this year like we go every year, both days, and Alcide danced until they took the stage down.

Other ones we like: the Crawfish Festival in Breaux Bridge in May, which has a dance floor set up under a tent and goes all weekend; and the big zydeco festival out at Plaisance on the Saturday before Labor Day, which is not our music, exactly, but is the best party in the state and you should go once. There are little church-fair dances and boucheries all over Acadiana all fall and winter that you'll only hear about by asking at the hall. So ask.

And then there's Mardi Gras, but that's a whole other page, and our granddaughter says one is enough for now.