‘Hoopla Train’ performs in Minneapolis ballrooms

Before there was Facebook to unite us for (virtual) fellowship and (remote) conversation, we had ballrooms.

“Hoopla Train” toured the state’s ballrooms in 2015, and it is coming to the three Twin Cities ballrooms over the next few weeks with a format – music, dancing, variety sketches, and a talent show – designed to encourage people to put down social messaging and get to polka-ing.

“Hoopla Train” will take place Thursdays through Saturdays through Oct. 15 at 7:30 p.m.; and Sundays at 2 p.m. at Minneapolis Eagles FOE #34, 2507 E. 25th Street in Minneapolis; Rushford Hall, 2223 Central Ave. NE in Minneapolis; Czech and Slovak Sokol Minnesota, 383 W. Michigan Street in St. Paul. Tickets are $10 to $20 and may be purchased at sodhousetheater.org.

“The kernel for the show was that Sodhouse Theater, which Darcy Engen and Luverne Seifert run, got a grant to tour historic ballrooms in Minnesota. They approached me to see if I was willing to collaborate to create something we could bring to these ballrooms,” explained Ivey Award-winner Jim Lichtscheidl, who wrote the rough script (there’s lots of improvisation), directed, and plays the man who presides over “Hoopla Train” with preternatural calm, Yardmaster Yip.

If you think “Hoopla Train” sounds a little like “Hee Haw” or “The Lawrence Welk Show,” you’re onto something.

“We aren’t making fun of those shows,” stated Lichtscheidl, noting that Welk’s touring show played some of the same ballrooms “Hoopla” has visited. “We wanted to have a sense of reality and, I guess you could say, a lot of heart in the piece.”

A big dose of both reality and heart comes courtesy of 90-year-old polka empresario Florian Chmielewski, whose Chmielewski Funtime Band performs with “Hoopla Train.”

“They got ahold of my daughter, Patty (who promotes and is in the Funtime band). They’re comedians and actors and they’re changing costumes, so there’s some free time in between. What they wanted us to do was to take the crowd along with us and entertain them with polkas and waltzes and old-time schottisches,” explained Chmielewski, who took a break from gardening to answer a few questions.

A former state senator, host of a musical show for 32 years in Duluth, 2015 inductee into the International Polka Association’s Hall of Fame, and recording artist with numerous CDs, Chmielewski said working with “Hoopla Train” has been a great fit.

“I like to get out on the floor, talk to people. That’s our purpose with the ‘Hoopla Train,’ to mix with the people, tell them about us, get them to dance,” stated the Sturgeon Lake native, a musician for 72 years. “The ‘Hoopla Train’ people are a bunch of nice folks to work with: pleasant, smart, good actors, and actresses. They treat us very well.”

Why wouldn’t they? Lichtscheidl says the Chmielewski Funtime Band has lots of great fans, many of whom have climbed aboard the “Hoopla Train.”

“A large portion of the audience is coming just to polka dance,” stated Lichtscheidl, who grew up in Lino Lakes. “We set out to create an environment that is fun and that makes people laugh and have a good time. We know it works by how much they dance, laugh, participate, and even hang around to talk to us after the show is over and the last polka is played.”

Part of the positive response, Lichtscheidl thinks, is because “Hoopla Train” offers a once-common experience that has become increasingly rare.

“I think it was Darcy who said ballrooms were the Facebook of their times. You would go to that ballroom in your town and see your neighbors and you could connect, once a week,” says Lichtscheidl. “I think people need that. Whether they know it consciously or not, they still desire to get together and have fun and share.”

That goes for the performers, too. Lichtscheidl recalls a “magical” evening when there was a blue moon while the troupe was performing in Rochester’s Blue Moon Ballroom, “We had a wonderful audience. I danced with a 90-year-old woman – I think her name was Pearl – and she schooled me in the two-step.”

Even if they’re not directing the performers’ footsteps, the audience is an important part of “Hoopla Train,” which the performers pronounce “HOOP!la Train.”

The show includes a talent contest. Although Lichtscheidl wasn’t sure if the amateur-hour idea would take, it did. Spotlighting singers, cloggers, and spoon-players has become a lively and surprising part of each show.

“One woman played a piece on a clarinet, and as she played, she began to dismantle it from the bottom up, until she was just playing the reed. That blew my mind,” recalls Lichtscheidl, who says the only restrictions on talent show entrants are that they must be family-friendly and less than five minutes long.

Minnesota’s most talented have ranged from schoolkids to nursing home residents, none of which surprises “100 percent Polish” Chmielewski. Even after seven decades of playing polka, country, and other music that could be described as old-timey, he is accustomed to not being the oldest person in the room.

“Just the other day, I played a guy’s birthday party,” says Chmielewski. “He was 97.”