Nearly every morning for the past decade, Tolman has spent his first hours step-dancing to tunes that hail from the Canadian maritime island of Cape Breton. It's a place he knew nothing about during his early years in New Hampshire, despite his hometown's propensity toward dance.

Contredanse, a folk dance style where dancers face each other in long lines, was part of Tolman's life growing up. His mother wrote a book on the subject, and the community was well known for its contredansers.

Even so, as Tolman got older, the formality of the New England dancers was a tad stifling. Tolman and his friends took to stomping to the beat during dances, for which they were promptly ejected from the festivities.

As chance would have it, Tolman's cousin became enthralled with the fiddlers of the northern Nova Scotia island, and invited him to travel to a Scottish games event in Boston featuring Cape Breton music.

"I didn't know about Cape Breton," Tolman said. "We'd never hardly heard of Canada, let alone Cape Breton."

The games included typical events and music, but a group in the corner of the arena caught Tolman's eye.

"Over in the side of the stadium, all by itself, there was a plain concrete pad. There was a fiddler and a piano, and a bunch of step dancers, and a lot of beer flowing. People would come out of the crowd and dance, young kids, old women," Tolman said. "I was absolutely godd--- fascinated."

The dancing, which resembles clogging and Celtic footwork, is a preserved form of a Scottish highland dance almost forgotten in its native land. But in "new Scotland" -- Nova Scotia -- the distinctive dancing continued.

Unlike other Celtic dances, the Cape Breton step-dancing leaves the motion isolated in the feet, with the arms and upper body hanging rag doll-like. The rapid-paced steps give motion to the distinctive Cape Breton music, a percussive style Celtic sound combining the fiddle, guitar, tin flute and, often, piano.

While the dancing Tolman saw in his youth was intriguing, life took over, and Tolman moved west, eventually coming to Alaska in the 1970s. His cousin, however, continued to pursue the Cape Breton fiddling and eventually made inroads in the tight-knit musical community.

Then, in the 1990s, the cousin invited Tolman to accompany him to Cape Breton on one of his visits, and Tolman welcomed the opportunity to visit the land where dancers were encouraged to stomp their feet.

The rest, as they say, is history. Once Tolman got a taste for the step-dancing, he never stopped. With his cousin's connections, he soon found himself immersed in the distinctive culture, and began returning year after year for classes and festivals.

"It was a real ordeal to learn the basic jig and the basic reel," Tolman said. "It took all my courage to get up and dance."

Breaking into either the music or dancing scene in Cape Breton can be intimidating, Tolman said, because you are surrounded by those who have been doing it all their lives.

Eventually, Tolman perfected the basic steps, and began working on more complicated moves.

Back in Homer, Tolman focused on contredanse and performing on the flute with the band Rather Be Dancin', which plays at many of the contredanse events in town. Though he told many people about his experiences, no one was infected by his love for the dance until he performed at a Christmas party one year. Several folks at the party took note of Tolman's rapid footwork, and asked him to teach them. That was around five years ago, and word has spread in Homer, enlarging the group of dancers to around 10.

Homer's Cape Breton step-dancing contingent meets on Saturday mornings in the winter in Tolman's shop to work on the steps. Tolman uses a special tape player that allows him to slow down the rapid Cape Breton tunes so the group can keep up. Occasionally, however, he plays the music in its full speed, just to give the dancers a taste of where they need to get to, but often the exercise is accompanied by cheerful protest from the group.

Tolman said he's manipulated the steps a bit, using some steps at times when they traditionally would not be used. Someday, he plans to introduce his ideas to the dancers in Cape Breton, but as yet, he's not felt he's good enough.

"My goal with dancing is to be able to get up and dance solo," Tolman said. "It defies analysis why Cape Breton dancing is so fun."

Carey James can be reached at cjames@homer news.com.