Simplicity Contra

We started out this morning with a trip to our local community recreation center to meet with the new director of activities. We'd proposed doing a contradance, either as a one-shot-deal or as a regularly scheduled event and apparently there's interest in that happening... whahooo! This is just what we were hoping would happen.

Early this year we took a caller's workshop, and have been seeking (and accepting) opportunities to call dances. We've organized and presented some community contradances, have called at some regular series dances in the area, and continue to try out dances here at home. We'd decided that this year we would use any chance we could get to gain experience and confidence, regardless of the financial impact, and that we would hopefully have some sort of regular thing to do next year. Not a bad plan. We've had varying levels of success, mostly very positive, and we've learned a lot... enough so that we put together some proposals in the hopes that we'd generate some fairly regular gigs.

So, this community center could be the start of a dream come true. The director is interested in having a weekly learning session which would essentially be an easy family style dance, and a monthly community dance. The weekly dance would be attended by sign up and would be more of a regular beginner session and possibly a specialty workshop. The monthly community dance would be offered at "Family Friendly" and affordable hours & rates, encouraging participation at all ages and levels of experience. The weekly sessions would hopefully build confidence and interest to make the monthly dance something everyone would look forward to.

We also have had interest from some adult education programs in the area, and our idea here is to offer a four-week session where we'd focus on some history & basic figures the first weeks, ending in a final contradance at the fourth session. Seems like there's interest here too, at least on the organizer level... we'll see how many people are interested in signing up. It's possible that this would also be an avenue for developing area-wide interest in contra style folk dancing, which would include some New England squares, circles, longways sets, triplets and even some of the old-time "chestnuts" called in the old-style way which is to call and play at the same time. It's pretty exciting to be bringing this kind of community activity back into the limelight, and we're appreciative of all the lessons, coaching and experience we've had this year. I'd also like to mention that we've had great support from our fellow musicians as we endeavor to put these programs together, it's great to have made such good friends. The key to all of these dances is to keep things interesting and also fairly simple and easy, so that everyone has a good time and gets to enjoy dancing. Keep your fingers crossed for us as we continue to do what we love, close to home!

In other news today, HAPPY BIRTHDAY DAD! We enjoyed visiting, sharing a gift of homemade applesauce, and having lunch together (thanks mom for delicious corn chowder and homemade bread).

Simplicity Contra is actually a contradance written by Dan Pearl.