It’s All About Dance Music as Dexter Community Band Kicks Off its 2025-26 Season

The Dexter Community Band has dialed up dance music from Broadway, ballet and the Big Band swing era for the first concert of its 2025-26 season. Selections include Four Dances from West Story, Aaron Copland’s Hoe Down, a musical spoof of Gilbert and Sullivan operettas titled Pineapple Poll and a medley of Big Band favorites such as A String of Pearls and Satin Doll.

The band will also be playing the frighteningly fast Dance of the Jesters by Peter Tchaikovsky in which Director William W. Gourley races the musicians to the end of the song.

No concert of dance music would be complete without a polka, so the band will be performing Annen-Polka by Austrian composer Johann Strauss II. First performed in 1852, the piece was known by the Viennese as a “Polka Francais” because it was more refined than the traditional raucous German polka.

In honor of Veterans Day Nov. 11, the band will also perform the Armed Forces Salute. Veterans are encouraged to stand when their military branch anthem plays.