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Arts & Entertainment

Community Barn Dance

All welcome, no partner or experience necessary

This old fashioned event is our gift to the community -- great family fun at low cost.  Back east, some towns have had a monthly dance for decades and they fill the high school gymnasium!  It may be new to most of us but once so was our farmers market, skate boarding, and bungee jumping.

The caller teaches every dance before the music starts and then calls directions while the musicians play Irish and/or Blue Grass.  Children as young as third grade can do it. 

New England Country Dancing is also called "contra dancing" (contra is Latin for "opposite" because you stand opposite your partner in long lines).  Unlike square dancing, people dance with everyone else in their line. 

Pride and Prejudice on PBS showed us the English version. Once this traditional dance arrived in the Colonies, however, Americans added the swing, which utilizes centrifugal force.  Over the centuries, contra dancing has picked up influences from Appalachia, the South, Cajun Country, and the West. 

Dances can be viewed online by Googling:
YouTube Wild Asparagus Wilson College
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EMkvwBfN2FU&feature=related

YouTube Folk Madness Contra87
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pK1JkDy_eW8

YouTube Washington Contra
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jcYOIXIMfJQ&feature=related

$5 adults
$2 youth (12-21)
Under 12 -- free

Wear cool clothing and comfortable shoes that don’t grip the floor too much.

The caller is Stuart Moody, with Jerry Allen on guitar and Daniel Kahane on fiddle.


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