Talk:Contra dance

Skirt preferences in contra dance

I recently ran a survey on the skirt preferences of contra dancers which relieved a notable preference for circle skirts and light twirly skirts among the participants. The results can be viewed here:

https://robehickman.com/skirts-study-contra-dance

I have been discussing this with caller Louise Siddions (who suggested the survey), and she thinks that the preference for twirly skirts in contra relates to the increased interest in adding spinning 'flourishes' to the dance style over time. Regardless, contra includes a lot of spinning, and the preferences to wear full skirts by both female and male dancers almost certainly relates to the visual flare they add to the dance, not just reasons of cooling as implied in the wiki article as it currently stands.

Having been unable to find anyone else having studied this already, I also did some research into the history of men wearing skirts at contra dances using information I could find online. My findings and sources are here:

https://robehickman.com/history-men-skirts-contra-dance — Preceding unsigned comment added by 2A00:23C6:388B:6B01:EDF2:D25A:B6E3:1154 (talk) 14:42, 19 November 2024 (UTC)

The whole area of clothing choices of dancers is something that I think warrants further research. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 2A00:23C6:388B:6B01:6A05:B791:CE7F:175C (talk) 12:40, 11 September 2024 (UTC)

• Interesting article, though it's not directly useable as a Wikipedia source. We do already cite "Contraculture: Bird Names and the Degendering of Contra Dance" in this article, but there are a couple of other sources you reference (e.g. "Deciphering Folk Costume: Dress Codes among Contra Dancers") which might be of use for this article and are not currently cited. (Without getting too far into WP:NOTFORUM territory, I will note that at least one of the quotes cited by the "Peter Barnes" USENET post to demonstrate the antiquity of the cross-dressing tradition in contra is fabricated, or at least misdated by a century or more; I am sceptical of the rest of that post also.) Caeciliusinhorto-public (talk) 16:15, 19 November 2024 (UTC)

  I have not attempted to validate the history of any of the quotes by "Peter Barnes" in the USENET post and am also sceptical of all of them. The earliest I can personally trace this phenomenon is one person in a discussion stemming from a post by Louise in an email list for dance callers, stating that they (male) had personally been wearing a skirt at contra dances in the early 1980's.

  "Twirly skirts - history question" on Shared Weight Lists.

  Establishing geographic spread over time would require a survey covering participants of a large chunk of the active contra dance events in the USA. It would be a lot of work considering that there are hundreds of active dance events across the country:

  https://www.trycontra.com/list.html

  This is beyond my ability, but I do believe that such research would be worthwhile, and sooner rather than later considering that older dancers are dying out, and very little appears to have been written down. 2A00:23C6:388B:6B01:549:C8F9:6551:F408 (talk) 14:07, 17 December 2024 (UTC)

Dance partners at UK contras

The article includes the following statement:

"while in the United Kingdom typically people dance with the same partner the entire evening"

In my lived experience this statement is false as of 2024. I have been dancing contra since Chippenham folk festival 2024, following this dancing at Bristol contra, the Stegastomp contra weekend, Sidmouth folk festival and Shrewsbury folk festival. At all of these events the policy and expectation has been to change partner after every dance. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 2A00:23C6:388B:6B01:11EF:6AAD:8706:7F72 (talk) 10:37, 11 September 2024 (UTC)

Yes, this is not my experience of contras in the UK either. The source does not make this statement about contras in general: it is talking about the UK dance club scene where contras are danced as one part of the programme alongside Playford and American Square Dance. (The source is also 20 years old and a random person's webpage; I'm not convinced it's really a reliable source from Wikipedia's perspective, and even if it were I don't know how much we can take it to be a useful description of the UK dance scene in 2024.) Caeciliusinhorto-public (talk) 10:53, 25 September 2024 (UTC)

Sounds convincing to me. Let's axe it (and now, I'll be more likely to look for contra dances the next time I'm in the UK!). Paulmlieberman (talk) 20:22, 25 September 2024 (UTC)

long list of links under "Finding Contra Dances"

There is a very long list of links under the section "Finding Contra Dances" that seems unnecessary and in violation of WP:LINKFARM as well as WP:ELLIST. I attempted to remove this months ago but apparently my edit was reverted. What are others' opinion of this section? PCChris23 (talk) 19:51, 11 March 2020 (UTC)

It's absolutely no doubt 100% an egregious violation of WP:LINKFARM. The problem is that it's also fairly useful to have some sort of advice for people who come to WP looking to find a local dance, so a bit of WP:IAR comes into play. Still, many of the links aren't that useful or are outdated. My ideal would be for someone to go through the list, remove pretty much all the listings of dances other than CDSS's map, and take the essays on contra and work them into the article elsewhere as references so that they don't totally disappear. Sdkb (talk) 20:17, 11 March 2020 (UTC)

Oops! I was looking under External Links, not Finding Contra Dances. I agree with PCChris23. I am an avid contra dancer (3-4 nights a week + one weekend per month). I can see why crazies would think this is a good place to spread the word, but it's too much. The 3 links directly under "Finding Contra Dances" in External Links is enough for most purposes. I rarely need to go beyond contradancelinks.com when looking for local dances and weekends; even its section on "The Rest of the World" seems pretty thorough. I think a handful of the other links might become references, and the remainder should go away. Paulmlieberman (talk) 20:19, 11 March 2020 (UTC)

What would you think of an initial step of moving all of the Finding Contra Dances section to the External Links section, and then paring it down and using some links as refs? Paulmlieberman (talk) 20:30, 11 March 2020 (UTC)

User:Paulmlieberman I am a Wikipedia noob but I think that would be a very good first step and would look a lot better. User:Sdkb may have some thoughts as well? PCChris23 (talk) 20:33, 11 March 2020 (UTC)

BTW, the addition of the "Finding Contra Dances" section was added anonymously on 24 Jan 2020. The section heading was added (also anonymously) on 30 Jan 2020.Paulmlieberman (talk) 20:38, 11 March 2020 (UTC)

Money Musk

Hi contra'pedians! I'm working on Draft:Money Musk. Finding sources has proved to be a bit of a challenge, as there's clearly reliable information about the dance out there, but much of it is located in old books that haven't been properly digitized. Help on the page would be appreciated! I'm pretty sure it will be the first page for a specific contra dance on Wikipedia, and once it's up we'll be able to nominate it for WP:DYK to hopefully get a video of contra on the Main Page. Courtesy pinging editors active in this area @Paulmlieberman, Bob K, and JeffTK:. {{u|Sdkb}} ^talk 07:25, 6 February 2021 (UTC)

@Sdkb, I have found that for situations like this, books.google.com is useful. In this case, I searched, at that site, for "money musk contra dance", and found, for instance, that it is described (with sheet music!) on pages 55-57 of American Country-dances: Twenty-eight contra-dances, largely from the New England states, published in 1918, which you can read in its entirety on line. I would use this resource, and create citations with the cite book template, being sure to include the URL for the books.google.com link. Paulmlieberman (talk) 16:50, 6 March 2021 (UTC)

Paulmlieberman, thanks, that's a great source; not sure how I missed it before! We also have a video forthcoming from Dugan Murphy.

I don't think we have a foolproof case for notability yet, as some editors might try to argue that just a listing of the dance describing it isn't WP:SIGCOV and some of the more modern sources may not be usable as they are WP:SELFPUBLISHED. We're certainly close, though.

It says here that the 2008 "Cracking Chesnuts" book apparently has 12 pages (!) about Money Musk, which would help a ton for supporting the history of the dance. Do any of you have access to that book? {{u|Sdkb}} ^talk 22:52, 6 March 2021 (UTC)

I don't have that book. I would ask Dugan or Will Mentor, Janine Smith, Cis, Beth Molaro, Claire Takemori or Nils. Paulmlieberman (talk) 01:47, 8 March 2021 (UTC)

@Paulmlieberman, Bob K, and JeffTK: I (finally) managed to obtain Cracking Chestnuts, and it had a ton of useful info, so the article is now live! I nominated it to appear with Dugan Murphy's video on the Main Page. {{u|Sdkb}} ^talk 18:08, 28 October 2021 (UTC)

Congrats, @Sdkb!!! I don't have time to read the article right now (working), but I will. Nice job finding that source, and the video is great! Makes me want to dance! Paulmlieberman (talk) 19:24, 28 October 2021 (UTC)

OMG... two banjoes, foot percussion, and too many fiddles to count! Waaahh, I want to dance again. But thank you. --Bob K (talk) 22:06, 28 October 2021 (UTC)

@Sdkb: Great work getting the article finished! I would review the DYK nomination, but it's probably better that somebody who didn't provide the video do that. I'm probably a little too involved. But you know, thinking about "Money Musk" has reminded me of when I heard one of the characters in 12 Years a Slave (film) play it on the fiddle. I just added a Wikilink to 12 Years a Slave (soundtrack). If you think it's appropriate, maybe you could add a "In popular culture" section mentioning the song's placement in the soundtrack and the movie. This is the best source to cite that my brief Google search brought up, but there might be something more substantial out there that says more about the tune's place in the movie. Dugan Murphy (talk) 21:57, 31 October 2021 (UTC)

Good find; I added the mention to the reception section! {{u|Sdkb}} ^talk 22:52, 31 October 2021 (UTC)

Heads up, it's on the Main Page for the next twelve hours! 🎉 {{u|Sdkb}} ^talk 00:18, 22 November 2021 (UTC)

Suggested project: Chorus Jig

If anyone is inspired by this and wants to work on a page of their own for a contra dance, Chorus Jig would seem the next appropriate target, given its equal fame. I could send you the pages from Cracking Chestnuts for it, although it'd be on you to go from there. Cheers, {{u|Sdkb}} ^talk 23:09, 31 October 2021 (UTC)

External links

I've spent a little bit of time today trimming and generally tidying up the external links section (diff) but it's still pretty much a mess. In particular, there are still 23 links under "video and photography", of which 14(!) are simply videos of contras. There are already five embedded videos of contra dancing in the article itself, so per WP:ELNO#1 we could probably cut all of these. I've therefore boldly taken an axe to those here. Five videos which are simply of contras are retained, selected on the basis of having reasonable video and sound and representing a variety of events, but my selection is somewhat arbitrary! (A partial exception is this, which I have retained despite not having the best videography because it shows the dance being walked through, something none of the others seem to). Caeciliusinhorto (talk) 17:16, 23 May 2022 (UTC)

True statement, but without context?

@Sdkb, I find the addition of this statement somewhat troubling:

 Most dancers are white and middle or upper-middle class.

I contra dance all over the east coast, and meet many dancers from all over, and, from my experience, the statement is absolutely true. The problem is, as I see it, a lack of context. I looked at the WP articles on a number of other dance forms, and none of them mentioned the ethnicity or social class of the dancers. The one exception was not so much Hip hop dance, but Hip hop music, and Hip hop (culture), where it's origins in the Black and Caribbean American communities of, especially, the Bronx, is described.

I think that contra dance's origins in New England and the Appalachians largely accounts for its whiteness. I'd like to see it given some of that context. What would former caller Rhiannon Giddens think? Paulmlieberman (talk) 15:07, 23 February 2024 (UTC)

Diff where I reverted the editor who removed the statement and explained my reasoning, just for the record. Western Folklore is a high-quality academic source (the only issue being that it's a little dated).

I don't find comparisons to other articles all that compelling, given that most other Wikipedia articles on dance forms are in only a slightly less-bad state than this one. If they were featured-level, they'd all include information on demographics.

Better explaining the context, though, would certainly be welcome (so long as it's sourced). We already mention the New England and Appalachian origins in the history section; would you have a suggestion on how we could contextualize beyond that? One possibility might be to move the statement to a place in the article nearer to that other context. Sdkb ^talk 15:22, 23 February 2024 (UTC)

I would note that other articles on dance forms do include some information on demographics (though often they could include much more!), which I think is highly relevant to many dances; e.g. Lindy hop talks about its origins as an African-American dance and its later adoption by white American and then European dancers; waltz discusses how it started as a peasant dance before being adopted by the upper classes. In the case of the family of folk dances from which contra comes, class and race are both highly relevant IMO: in the US, the preservation of square and contra dance in the first half of the 20th century owes a lot to Henry Ford's desire to have a form of popular dance and music for white Americans which was not based on black and Jewish culture in the way that jazz music and the related dance forms was; certainly in the UK and I imagine also in the US the folk revival in the 60s and 70s saw a huge change from folk music and dance being primarily a living tradition of the working classes to being primarily a self-conciously preserved and/or revived tradition of the middle classes. Caeciliusinhorto-public (talk) 16:35, 23 February 2024 (UTC)

map problem

The first ref in the article is to a CDSS map of dances around the country, which CDSS no longer has on their website. So, there is a link to a copy of the map in the Wayback Machine at https://web.archive.org/web/20181001080018/http://map.cdss.org/#loc=43.445683,-80.075294,2z&types=contra Unfortunately, the map doesn't display (at least, not for me on Chrome). I suggest we replace it with the imperfect, but well-populated, map at https://trycontra.com/events. Waddaya think? Paulmlieberman (talk) 10:37, 25 September 2024 (UTC)