My first step when I decided in the spring of 2022 that I wanted to become a contra dance caller was to learn the basics of calling. I did this in two ways. First, I met with two local contra callers in Victoria for advice. Rosemary Lach and Anne Glover both gave me valuable feedback and resources for learning to call contra dances.
I was absolutely shocked when Rosemary offered to give me her collection of contra dances that she had been collecting over the years. Contra callers must be intimately familiar with all of their dances, and the box of dances that Rosemary gave me represented a lifetime of collecting dances. Each of the cards in the box pictured below is a dance, and learning them all is quite a daunting task!
With Rosemary’s dance cards in hand, I was ready to learn a few dances! To learn a dance, a caller must rehearse their instructions while listening to the phrasing of music, until they can fit the dances to the phrase. So far, I have been able to learn four dances. Two of the dances were from Rosemary’s dance box, one was a dance that I tried at a Victoria contra dance and loved, and the last was a dance from a book that I heard was very easy (it was).
So far, I can call
Essex Reel (Tony Parks)
Jefferson Reel (Dudley Briggs)
Simplicity Swing (Becky Hill)
In the coming week, I hope to learn a few new dances that I tried dancing recently and liked.
This is such a cool hobby! I love that you also included a picture of you dancing, because I had a good general idea of what the dancing might look like without even having to read your first post. I think it might be good to have a sentence at the beginning hyperlinking your first post explaining contra dancing. Some thing like “if you’re not familiar with contra dancing check out this post to read a short explanation” that way anyone can jump in at any of your posts. I also liked that you included the names of some of dances you learned, if there’s any YouTube videos of them it would be really cool if you could link them so people can quickly check them out and see what you’re learning. Looking forward to learning more 🙂
I really love how you have brought us along on your personal journey as you learn to become a Contra dance caller. To fully understand this post I think I need to look back at your earlier posts to get a deeper understanding of the content. I would love to see what’s on the papers in that box — there are so many dances in there! After reading this I would like to dive a little deeper into the world of Contra dancing to visualize what you are writing about. Thanks for sharing!