Chris Page's contra dance site

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Selected contra dance links

There's hundreds of web pages out there. I'm not even going to try and list all of them. Instead I'm going to focus on the more unusual and off-the-beaten path.

The major links

  • The big links page, maintained by Charlie Seelig. The most comprehensive web page I've found. This should keep you busy reading for a few weeks. Of particular note are the the resources page and the essays page.
  • Michael Dyck's contradance index: A rather detailed list of just about all contra dances in print. Don't expect instructions -- those are in the books and on the web sites, but you get the needed references. Of special interest is his sources sub-page, which gives the table of contents for all the books, and lists all the web sites that have dances.
  • Cary Ravitz has a nice set of links hitting most of the big sites of interest to contra callers.
  • That should keep you busy. But there's sites I'd specially like to point out.

    Choreography and caller's issues

  • SharedWeight: Mailing lists, the primary one of which is for and by contra dance callers. Try skimming the archives to get a sense of it, or see my own list of favorites. Then join.
  • rec.folk.dancing: Ten years worth of contra dance discussions. I have a separate page detailing the best of them.
  • Alternative traditions

  • Square Dance History project: Lots of archival footage and documentation of squares. A growing site.
  • Colin Hume's site: Not just relevant to English Country, many of his extensive essays also apply to contra.
  • Square dance interviews: Numerous interviews of people from the square dance community, both trying to preserve their history, and figure out where they're going. Many are very interesting reading. What's more, there's several interviews from people involved in traditional dance.
  • History

  • Library of Congress collection of dance manuals: An amazing trove of an archive of old dance manuals, a number of which involve contra dance.
  • Northern Junket: An invaluable history of contra and traditional dance, edited by Ralph Page, between 1949 and 1984. I've got a separate page of my favorite parts of this magazine.
  • Local dances

  • San Diego contra dance is my home dance, and meets second and fourth Saturdays, and Fridays of any other weekend.
  • English Country Dance meets early Sunday evenings in Poway.
  • Reels & Squares Contra dance is one of the few Callerlab contra dances in the country, happening Sunday afternoons in Balboa park.
  • The California Dance Co-Operative sponsors many monthly dances throughout the Los Angeles area.
  • The Living Tradition runs a fourth-Saturday dance in Anaheim.

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