Articles, essays, and animadversions on dancing

What's New?

• Chip Handler's About Contra Dance page includes some animated diagrams.
• Stokin' the Contra Fires by Sheridan Hill
• Contra Dancing and Matrices by Ivars Peterson, about Bernie Scanlon, a dancer and mathematician from California.
• Chapters from Erik Hoffman's fine book Contradictations.
• Mark Carroll's article page.
• Ryan Thomson's reviews of dance and music events also includes various other interesing writing.

A Miscellany

• Contra Dancing and Matrices by Ivars Peterson, about Bernie Scanlon, a dancer and mathematician from California.
• A review of Mary Dart's book Contra Dance Choreography: a History of Social Change, reviewed by Penn Fix
• Ted's Funeral by Dan Pearl
• My Parents were Undercover Square Dancers by Mark Stibich
• The State Folk Dance Conspiracy: Fabricating a National Folk Dance by Julie Mangin
• The Cyberspace Monkey Contra Classifications, an internet draft by Carol Thompson, Steve Satterfield, and the members of the CMTF Working Group.

Dance skills and choreography

• Chapters from Erik Hoffman's fine book Contradictations.
• Some Swing Positions collected by James Williams and Dana Nau
• Good Contra and Square Dancing Defined by Paul Tyler
• Changes in contra dance choreography by Jenny Beer
• Dancing the Woman's Role by Bob Golder
• Western Square Dancing for Traditional Dancers. Bill Ackerman's article about the differences between "traditional" and "Western" square and contra dancing is quite sympathetic to traditional choreography.

Basic Skills and Etiquette

• Guns and Etiquette at the Dance by Bill Meyers
• Teaching Experienced Folks to Dance by David Kaynor
• David's Workshop comes to New Haven by Barbara Ruth
• Everything About Dancing That Nobody Ever Talks About by Dave Goldman
• Improving Problem Dancers by Dave Cottle

Teaching and Calling

• Notes on the Three Minute Rule by Gene Hubert and Dot Kent
• Matching Dances to Tunes by Erna-Lynne Bogue
• Words and Confusion, part 1, Sound-Alikes by Jim Saxe
• Handholds - Why and How by Orlo Hoadley.
  This fascinating analysis of WSD handholds is a part of Robert French's Western Square Dancing page, but Orlo says many things that apply to all forms of dancing.
• Preparing and rescuing walkthroughs, three "Contra Connection" articles
  by Larry Jennings, Ted Sanella, and Dan Pearl from the CDSS newsletter. (These may well be AWOL.)

Music and Sound

• Commonly Held Audio Myths by Dave Cottle
• Choosing Tunes for Medleys, some notes by David Kirchner, Brian Rost, Cari Fuchs, Jon Weinberg and Carol Compton.
• Matching Dances to Tunes by Erna-Lynne Bogue
• Favorite Tunes by Kiran Wagle

Dance notes

• Stokin' the Contra Fires by Sheridan Hill
• Ryan Thomson's reviews of dance and music events also includes various other interesing writing.
• A Square Dance Party at Breaking Up Thanksgiving by Paul Tyler and Gene Hubert
• David's Workshop comes to New Haven by Barbara Ruth
• My First Contra Dance by Eric Smith (which seems to be lost.)

Dance history

• In Praise of Herbie Gaudreau by Tony Parkes
• Absolutely no contras! by Tony Parkes

Writings on dance communities

• Also see Bill Tomczak's Articles and History page
• Bright Lights, Big City, Zesty Contras by Michael Young
• There's no place like home... by Caroline Fahrney
• Everything About Dancing That Nobody Ever Talks About by Dave Goldman
• Letters to the Greenfield dancers
  • by David Kaynor (1988)
  • by Susan Kevra (1995)
• Building a Dance Community by Chris Kermiet
• Some thoughts on "Experienced Dances" by Chris Kermiet

Animadversions

• My Parents were Undercover Square Dancers by Mark Stibich
• Contra Classifications by Carol Thompson and Steve Satterfield.
• How to be a dance tyrant from the CDSS newsletter.

Other places

• Mark Carroll's article page.
• Several back issues of the NEFFA News are online.
• Bill Tomczak has a page of resources about dance community and history.
• The CDSS has one issue of their newsletter online, including the articles listed above and several others. (This may well be AWOL.)

What is contradance?

• Chip Handler's About Contra Dance page includes some animated diagrams.
• Gary Shapiro's wonderful and comprehensive page, What is Contra Dance?
• The Big Scioty informational blurb
• Les Francey and Farrell Boyce's contra dance primer, on the Hamilton Country Dancers' page
• What is Barn Dancing? from the Topeka Barn Dance Association

now GO away and come back later.