June 8th, Contra Dance in North Adams

Posted on May 31, 2024 by patdunlavey

Saturday, June 8th: come to a delightful community contra dance! North Berkshire Community Dance will hold its monthly contra dance with calling by Peter Stix, and live music provided by an open band, at All Saints Episcopal Church, 59 Summer St., in North Adams.

All are welcome. Come alone, or with friends – most people change partners for each dance throughout the evening. New dancers and families with children are encouraged to arrive by 7:30 for instruction in the basics.

Peter Stix will call all dances, starting the evening with easy dances friendly to newcomers and families with children. The caller teaches new moves and skills as needed, so that beginners can dance with everyone right from the start.

Music will be provided by an open band, led by George Wilson on fiddle and Becky Hollingsworth on keyboard. “Open band” means that anyone with an acoustic instrument is welcome to join. A list of likely tunes is available at https://northberkshiredance.org/tune-list/

Contra dancing is a living tradition in New England; for hundreds of years, neighbors and friends have made their own social entertainment in this highly collaborative dance form. Our summer 2024 series in North Adams will be even more participatory than currently common. In addition to the open band, we will have an introductory calling workshop for curious dancers. Please check out the details at www.NorthBerkshireDance.org

The dance will run 7:30 to 10:30 p.m. in the Community Hall of the All Saints Episcopal Church, 59 Summer St., North Adams. Admission is pay-as-you-can: $5 – $15, or barter equivalent, suggested.

May 11th Contra Dance

Posted on May 2, 2024 by patdunlavey

Join us Saturday, May 11th, for a delightful community contra dance! North Berkshire Community Dance will hold its monthly contra dance with calling (teaching) by Quena Crain, and live traditional fiddle music by masters of the New England contra dance repertoire.

The dance will run from 7:30 to 10:30 p.m. in the Community Hall of the First Congregational Church, 906 Main St., Williamstown. Admission is pay-as-you-can, $12 to $20 suggested, and barter is also welcome. Covid protocol: masks are very welcome but not required.

Quena Crain, who calls all over New England (and far beyond), brings an infectious joy to the dance hall. Her fun calling, and easy teaching style, are beloved by all age groups, from elementary school, through college, and well past retirement. Quena is adept at leading dance events for people of any experience level. For this dance, Quena will use “larks and robins” role terms.

Mary Cay Brass has been a foundational performer and teacher in the traditional dance and music community for many years, supplying a vital pulse in many beloved dance bands, including “The Greenfield Dance Band” with David Kaynor, and “Airdance” with Rodney Miller. Laurie Indenbaum has been fiddling for dances in Vermont and surrounding states since 1976, with many fine callers and bands, including “Applejack” and “The Full Catastrophe.” Andy Davis has been a part of Nowell Sing We Clear, and on staff at Country Dance and Song Society summer camps for many years. He also plays accordion for a Morris dancing team and calls for contra dances. Each of the three has been playing for contra dances for over forty years, and frequently together. Their music will lift your feet, and bring all the dancers together into one happy dance.

7/23/2022 Update – NBCD remains in a holding pattern

Posted on July 23, 2022 by patdunlavey

Dear North Berkshire Dance Community

The organizing committee of North Berkshire Community Dance met last Sunday and decided to return to a holding pattern regarding when we will try to restart dancing. We do not anticipate returning to scheduled indoor 2nd Saturday dances before the end of this year. We will continue to evaluate the pandemic situation, and be very much guided by the experiences of larger and more active organizations in the regional and national contra dance community as they lead the way.

Factors in this decision:

As organizations around the country have begun dancing again, we are seeing a lot of starting and stopping, disagreement and even acrimony about what are appropriate Covid precautions and policies, and in some unfortunate cases, records of dances becoming Covid “super-spreading” events. No doubt that people are ecstatic to be dancing again under responsible Covid policies and we would love to follow their lead, but to our thinking, we have not reached a point where we feel confident that we can organize contra dancing that is joyful and safe.
We decided that it is not useful to keep trying, on a month to month basis, to out-think this pandemic. Every time we think we have figured out what the pandemic is doing, it pulls a new rabbit out of its hat. We want to wait until we feel confident that when we announce the resumption of monthly 2nd Saturday dances, we will not need to be in constant Covid monitoring mode and always prepared to cancel.
We are a small organizing committee and we need every one of us to be enthusiastically on-board and ready to pull together when we announce our first dance. Even as we started making tentative plans to organize our first dances earlier in the summer, it was never clear that we had the internal consensus that we must have to be successful. Thankfully, we have now recognized this, and are content with this decision to let other dance organizations lead the way for us.

We will continue meeting as an organizing committee on a regular basis to monitor and discuss the situation in the broader dance community. We will be getting out to try dancing in nearby communities, ourselves, both to see how they’re doing, and to nurture our own love of and connection with social dancing. We encourage you to do the same, to the extent that you are personally comfortable. Maybe we will see some of you there!

With gratitude to all of you in our dance community!

North Berkshire Community Dance
Pat Dunlavey – president
Eric Buddington – treasurer
Doone Mackay – secretary
Kate Abbot
Nick Adams
John Seto