I looked for videos of contra dancing in Denmark and found these three:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9hhxwVuoI2g (119-120 BPM)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J4KB-uSWkKc (117-118 BPM)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=03ALEBBtUbc (~113 BPM)
These all seem to be from the same event. It's possible that a wider sampling
of contra dances in Denmark (which may not be available Youtube) would support
Tom's recollection of faster tempos.
The videos do seem to support Tom's observation about the infrequency of
improvisation. On casual viewing, without trying to look carefully at each
visible dancer in each video, I didn't notice anyone twirling out of swings
much less doing dips, etc., and I noticed only one place where it seemed that
someone (partially obscured from the camera by other dancers) embellished a
nominal courtesy turn with a twirl.
In 1992, I attended a conference in Denmark and managed to find my way to a
couple of dances while I was there. I don't have a specific recollection about
the tempos, but if I recall correctly, the events I got to were regular local
dances with recorded music (probably on cassette or vinyl). That might have
meant that the callers were in control of variable-speed players.
--Jim
> On Sep 22, 2019, at 4:53 PM, tom hinds via Callers
> <callers@lists.sharedweight.net> wrote:
>
> I believe that the tempo for dancing contras in the United States has to do
> with the style and wants of the dancers. It’s the desire to improvise and
> flirt which I think is an integral part of the US contra scene and is the
> reason for the tempo being what it is.
>
> If you look at the contra dancing in Denmark, the tempos are much faster.
> Although I haven’t been there for several years they don’t improvise and they
> don’t do much if any flirting either. They dance very straight. My
> conclusion from watching them quite a bit is that slower tempos would leave
> them standing around which they wouldn’t find as much fun. I’ve never timed
> the music but I would guess it’s easily at 124 bpm or higher, definitely the
> same as a tempo for squares here.
>
> Sent from my iPad
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