Hi John - Thanks for those links - they'll come in handy!
We do actually do Barn-dance-type dances here, but for weddings and birthdays when someone wants to get their friends dancing. We call them, rather inelegantly, ONS or One Night Stand dances. But you are right. I'm not aware of any regularly scheduled dances for basically non-dancers, unless you count Family dances. But a Family dance that goes on for a while begins to resemble a contra dance - those darn kids learn so fast! Perhaps others on this list will know of pockets of community dances where the emphasis is on the socializing rather than the dancing. I like the distinction Mary Dart mentioned in her book Contra Dance Choreography - a Reflection of Social Change<http://www.cdss.org/elibrary/dart/> : "...the term '*community dance*' refers to a dance event enjoyed by a group of people for whom the dance is but one of many shared activities; the term *'dance community' *refers to a group of people whose primary association with one another is at the dance" M E On Fri, Jun 18, 2010 at 4:03 AM, John Sweeney <[email protected]>wrote: > Hi Martha, > You said "Wouldn't it follow that sometimes some of the 1.5 > square yards will have to be wasted if the width isn't a multiple of 10 > feet (for contra) or 15 feet (for English)?" > > Absolutely, it is just a quick rule of thumb to get an idea > of the capacity of a hall, i.e, No you can't get 150 people doing a > dance at the same time! > > I susepct a wedding party will be happy to squeeze two lines > into that space, especially if you can push the chairs back a bit to > make it slightly bigger. > > And of course, for a wedding party, I wouldn't be calling > modern American contras, or what you call English Country Dancing > (Playford-style). I would be selecting simple barn dances such as you > will find at: > http://homepage.ntlworld.com/greenery/BarnDances/ > http://www.mts.net/~jinks%20/fd/menu.htm<http://www.mts.net/%7Ejinks%20/fd/menu.htm> > http://www.ceilidhcalling.co.uk/dancelist.php > > I'm not sure if you do this sort of stuff much in America; > when I visit I only ever seem to find contra and ECD (which is fine, as > I love both). But here in England there is a whole other stream of > social folk dance known as Barn Dance or Ceilidh. > > Hope that helps. > > Happy dancing, > John > > John Sweeney, Dancer, England [email protected] 01233 625 362 & > 07802 940 574 > http://www.contrafusion.co.uk <http://www.contrafusion.co.uk/> for > Contra Dancing in Kent > > > _______________________________________________ > Callers mailing list > [email protected] > http://www.sharedweight.net/mailman/listinfo/callers > -- For the good are always the merry, Save by an evil chance, And the merry love the fiddle And the merry love to dance. ~ William Butler Yeats
