Michael Dyck's Contradance Index

... celebrating 13 years of indexing ...

(Wondering what contradance is? Try this set of links.)


Last updated 2010 January 1: 8768 records, 6176 distinct titles.

Title
Author

Recent updates:
Sep 2 wKaufman 1 dance added ("Money Musk").
Sep 2 wMandelberg Change of URL.
Sep 2 wRavitz 1 dance added ("Around the Sound").
Sep 2 wWeberg 3 dances added ("Seagull", "Now We Are Four", "Rocks and Dirt").
Sep 2 wWeiler 1 dance added ("Happy Ending").
Dec 7 wCubitt 8 dances added ("A Slice of Life", "The Blizzard Chimney Contra", "California Star Boxing Flea", Jackie's Three", Loughborough Polka", "Meltdown", "Swing Swang Swung", "Zayat Contra").
Dec 7 wGraham 1 dance added ("Sledding 'Over the Hills'").
Dec 7 wHodapp 1 dance added ("Bradley!").
Dec 9 wHume 1 dance added ("The Wrong Side of Town").
Dec 9 wKrackau 1 dance added ("The Digging Dutchman").
Dec 9 wMortland Change of URL.
Dec 9 wOrmand_c Change of URL.
Dec 9 wPage Change of URL, 5 dances added ("Piston Pousettes", "Piston Pousettes Plus", "TLC Tempest", "Yarn Dance", "Primrose Path").
Dec 9 wRavitz 5 dances added ("Autumn Air", "Hey Weaver", "Laura's Lilt", "Rhyme or Rhythm", "Sync or Grin").
Dec 9 wSouthard 1 dance added ("Blue Bayou").
Dec 10 wCDSS_starter Index CDSS's "Contra Dance Repertoire" (Starter Kit) (10 dances).
Dec 10 wHatchling Index "Hatchling Dance Choreographies" (19 dances).
Jan 1 wCrane 4 dances added ("Dryden Lake", "Peppered Potatos", "Potato Assault", "Stan Chapman's").
Jan 1 wMohr 7 dances added ("Goody One Shoe", "In Cahoots", "Leave the Wine", "Mad Slice", "The Shy Gazelle", "String of Swings", "Ted and Lynn")
Jan 1 wSmuklerD 1 dance added ("Cortland Fancy").


My goal for this web site is to index every contra dance ever published. Moreover, I intend to include any other country dances that are published alongside contras. By "published", I mean in a book, booklet, newsletter, or on the World-Wide Web.

I'm not trying to index every publication, just the ones that have appeared since 1953. (If you know of any I'm missing, please let me know!) I chose that cutoff because "The Contra Dance Book" by Rickey Holden "is a compilation of all the contra and progressive circle dances which have appeared in readily available American literature between 1850 and 1953." So by indexing that book (CDBH), I'm claiming to cover all the contras published up to 1953.

For each dance, I have the following info:

Publication Info
This consists of a book (or newsletter) identifier and a page number (or dance number, if they're numbered). Eventually, I'll have the full publication info somewhere.
Dance Title
Pretty straightforward.
Authorship
Usually this is a single author, but sometimes it's more than one, either working together or one adapting the other.
Formation
I've let myself be a bit cryptic on this.
  • Lm = "longways for as many as will"
  • Cm = "circular for as many as will"
  • L = "longways fixed set"
  • C = "circular fixed set"
And then numbers defining the composition of each (minor) set, and then optional stuff indicating whether each couple is proper or improper, and whether it's a mixer.

Note that I do not include the figures of the dances. If you're looking for on-line country dance descriptions, check my list of sources for codes that begin with 'w'.


And now, the indexes:

My list of sources, the codes I use to denote them, and my raw data files are all available here.


Website by Michael Dyck, jmdyck@ibiblio.org

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