Oberlin College has had a significant dance scene for some time. In addition to a regular dance series on campus, the Oberlin Contra Dance Club, sponsors an annual dance weekend. The 12th Annual Dandelion Romp is coming up in April. From conversations with alums, I gather there’s significant participation from both the students and the …
Read more »
Tag Archives: contra dance
Oberlin Dance Blogging
Categories: Features & Fun Also tagged body-mind disconnect, college, intergenerationality, oberlin 
Leave a comment »
Leave a comment »A Week of Dancing on “Kentucky’s Backroads”
The Christmas Country Dance School at Berea College has been a place to celebrate and practice traditional dance, music, song and crafts since 1938. Lexington, Kentucky’s ABC news station did a nice piece on this year’s CCDS for a series called “Kentucky’s Backroads”. Read the story and see the video. (Or watch it fullscreen.) As …
Read more »
Categories: Features & Fun Also tagged berea, christmas country dance school, dance, video, wendy graham 2 Comments »
2 Comments »Tony Parkes on a Caller’s Talents
What is “talent” when it comes to calling dances? What makes a talented caller? These are perhaps not questions one can fully answer in a sitting, but I’d like to share one pretty good stab at it. Tony Parkes, Boston-area caller of contras and squares, recently published the 2nd Edition of his landmark book, Contra …
Read more »
Categories: Features & Fun, Store Also tagged calling, contra dance calling: a basic text, talent, tony parkes 3 Comments »
3 Comments »Seven Questions for Larry Unger
Larry Unger has more miles under his belt than just about any other contra musician. For more than 25 years, he’s been on the road playing countless dances and composing hundreds of tunes. Recently his band Notorious — with Eden MacAdam-Somer (fiddle), Sam Bartlett (mandolin), Mark Hellenberg (percussion), and Mark Murphy (bass) — released their …
Read more »
Tradition and Change
by Brad Foster, Executive & Artistic Director I gave a keynote address to the Southeast Dance Leadership Conference in North Carolina in October of this year. I wanted to show the lively and innovative state of change of contemporary life, and to contrast that to similar change in the past. I chose three videos to …
Read more »
Categories: Features & Fun Also tagged demon barbers, dudley laufman, morris dance, southeast dance leadership conference, techno contra 1 Comment »
1 Comment »
