Community Dance / Party Night Resources

Type
Collection
Author
Barry Clasper (barry@clasper.ca)
Last Update
2021-03-31 21:48:47
Description

This collection page points to material useful for doing single party nights or other dances aimed at people with no prior dance training. These dances are intended to be stand-alone events held strictly for the enjoyment of the dancers on that night. They are not designed to be recruiting vehicles for MWSD clubs, although there may well be cases where such an event might pique someone's interest in a MWSD club.

Following is a list showing a number of systems or repositories of material to help design single-night dances. Click on an item title to go to access the resource.

List Of Community Dance Resources and Documents
CALLERLAB Dances Resource Website
This Dance Resource is a compilation of Beginner Party Dances, Community Dances, Contra Dances, and Traditional Square Dances. Dances are grouped by type and listed in HTML code for easy viewing. Each dance is also available to be downloaded as either a Rich Text File or a .pdf file. There are also supporting documents including a Glossary of Calls and Formation Diagrams.
Lloyd Shaw Foundation
The Lloyd Shaw Foundation is dedicated to the preservation, restoration and teaching of the folk dances of America. This site contains much reference material and music for traditional dance forms.
Community Dance Journals
The CD Journal (formally titled CDP Journal) is published several times a year by the Committee for Community and Traditional Dance (CCTD). The Community Dance Program Journal is aimed at providing material to support dance events for non-dancers: party nights, intro nights, demos, etc. The material uses a limited number of calls (about 24) and allows the engagement of people with no prior square dance experience. Each Journal edition documents a number of such dances and the CD Journal has been published since 1992.
Country Dance and Song Society (CDSS)
This website contains a great deal of material and references regarding Square Dancing and other related dance forms.
Dancing For Busy People
This book contains over 400 dances that can be taught quickly to non-dancers.
YouTube BDPLS Channel
Each year CALLERLAB holds a convention which is a major education and networking opportunity for callers. For many years the convention has been immediately preceded by a 1-1/2 day seminar for callers who do party nights and dance events for non-dancers. It was named the Beginner Dance Party Leaders Seminar (BDPLS). Many hours of videos were taken during these seminars. Cal Campbell has posted 256 videos showing dance teaches from the BDPLS and other sources. Written descriptions of dances can often be difficult to follow if you haven't seen the dance action and this resource lets you see many of the most popular ones.