Michael Dyck's Contradance Index

... indexing contradances since 1996 ...

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

If you like this site, you might also enjoy The Caller's Box, a contra dance database.

Last updated 2019 May 04: 13425 records, 8866 distinct titles.

Title
Author

(Sometimes, for unknown reasons, searching yields a "504 Gateway Time-out" error. If that happens, remember that you can still go to any of the static index pages, and use your browser's "Find in page" feature.)

Recent updates:

Apr 02 wCoffman 53 dances added (...).
Apr 02 wCrane 5 dances added ("Another Ted's Triplet #7", "Another Ted's Triplet #8", "Throwaway 2018.3", "Throwaway 2018.4", "You Asked For It").
Apr 02 wDVA 19 dances added ("50/50", "Back Road to Ayer", "Bob's Valentine", "Bye Bye Baltimore", "Circle of Love", "Diamond Jubilee in Mansfield", "Friday Night Fever", "Gene's Valentine", "Goosebumps", "Hey with Benefits", "Martha and the Steel Penny", "Mountain Men", "New Elixir", "November Nightts", "Rory O'Less", "Sweet Potato Pie", "The Amazing Sarah Wilcox", "The Amethyst Pear", "The Connectrix").
Apr 02 wDalsemer 1 dance added ("Three Quarters of a Century").
Apr 02 wGraham 1 dance added ("Caroline's Stellar Stomp").
Apr 02 wGreenT 2 dances added ("Sir Roger de Coverley", "Tea-Kettle").
Apr 02 wHemphill 3 dances added ("Diamond Jubilee", "Freebird", "Mountain Men").
Apr 02 wHume 3 dances added ("Christmas Hornpipe", "Dodgy Dancing", "Pop the Line").
Apr 02 wKing 1 dance added ("Momentum").
Apr 02 wMohr 1 dance added ("Icing on the Cake").
Apr 02 wVeino 7 dances added ("A Long Courtship", "Dreaming of Dolphins", "Becky's Boulder", "Rockslide", "You Caught My Eye", "Three Out Of Four Ain't Bad", "Pumpkin Spice Madness").
Apr 02 wWild 1 dance added ("Comeback Contra").
May 03 wDVA 1 dance added ("Diamond Jubilee").
May 03 wGreenT 1 dance added ("English Gay Gordons").
May 03 wGrisanti 1 dance added ("Triad and True").
May 03 wPage 1 dance added ("Diamonds Are For NEFFA").
May 03 wRavitz 3 dances added ("Astray", "Darlene's (Delirious) Dream", "Valley of Fire").
May 04 wSouthard Change URL.

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. 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'.

Here's my to-do list, including links to lots more websites containing contra dances that I haven't indexed yet.

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

Website generously hosted by ibiblio.org.
hosted by ibiblio