What Is Contra Dancing?
“Contra
Dancing is a form of American
folk dance in which the dancers
form a set of two parallel lines,
which run the length of the hall.
Each dance consists of a sequence
of moves that ends with couples
having progressed one position
up or down the set. As the sequence
is repeated, a couple will eventually
dance with every other couple
in the set. Contra Dancing was
all the rage in 1800.”
From
"A
Contra Dance Primer" by Les
Francey and Farrell Boyce, Hamilton
Country Dancers
Click
here to see "Contradance
USA", a web video about the history
of contra dance in Quicktime format.
(You can download Quicktime for
free: Mac
version | Windows
version)
First Sunday
of each month, starting January
2008
The newest dance in the North
Bay is the contra on the first Sunday
of each month at the Petaluma
Woman's Club in Petaluma. As the first Friday
Sonoma Contra dance ended in the
Spring of 2006, the First Friday
dance started off with a bang in
August, 2006 at Petaluma's Hermann
Sons Hall. We were there for just
over a year. We then switched to
the first Sundays, starting in January
2008, at the Petaluma Woman's Club:
good acoustics; charming arts and
crafts style hall built in 1913;
easy drive; occasional and optional
pre-dance activities. We welcome
old and new dancers. It is both the
oldest yet newest of our NBCDS dances.
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Third Friday of each month
 After
many years of dancing in various
school gyms, we were happy to find
this unique hall. Munroe
Hall's folksy style and great floor
have helped make this third Friday
dance, one of the most popular.
Michael Martin’s programming
has brought us the callers and
bands regularly bring dancers from
all over the North Bay. His
homemade cookies and lemonade and
homegrown carrots top it off. This
is also the site of our annual
urban dance weekend, Faultline
Frolic and our semi-annual New
Year’s Eve Gala.
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Second
Saturday of
each month
The San Rafael
contra dance, generally held on
the second Saturday of the month
at Marin Masonic Hall, is known
as one of the liveliest--and friendliest--dances
in the greater Bay Area. Committed
to featuring the very best touring
talent to supplement the hottest
Northern California bands and callers,
this dance series attracts discriminating
dancers from north, south and east.
It was the first series to take
what seemed the radical step of
charging a couple dollars extra
for extraordinary traveling staff.
It’s important to check
the San Rafael schedule because
dance dates are sometimes shifted
to accommodate the tours of nationally
known bands. In 2007, for example,
Sunday dances enable Moving Violations
with Linda Leslie and Hotpoint
with Seth Tepfer to delight San
Rafael dancers in conjunction with
other dance weekend activity. In
2006 Dancers Without Borders—an
afternoon of international village
dance preceding an evening contra--was
introduced as an occasional chance
to do some cross-over dancing to
the rare band that is sufficiently
versatile. Watch the calendar for
our New Year’s Eve Gala dance.
And there’s almost always
dark chocolate at the break.
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Fourth
Saturday of
each month
 The Sebastopol Contra dance is
located in cozy Wischemann
Hall,
a structure built specifically
for dancing by dancers. That
means there is terrific hard-wood
dance floor. We always have
a live band to play driving jigs
and reels.
The Sebastopol Contra has garnered
a reputation for being accessible
for newcomers to contra dancing. The
dance hall is relatively small
and the regular dancers are exceptionally
friendly.
Elizabeth Douglas is shown in the adjacent picture. She founded the dance in 2002, and was both its caller and programmer until 2008. Our dance community suffered a loss with Elizabeth's passing in December 2009.
Please join us and kick up your
heels!
Hall History
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