Saturday, November 16, 2019
Strap on yer dancin’ shoes, pack dinner, or a snack, and BYOB! Conservation Center favorite Robert Messore and his colleagues will fill the Carriage House with the gleeful sounds of Contra!
Contra is danced to Celtic, Quebecois, Old Time, New England, Southern Appalachian, Jazz, Blues, and all sorts of other music played by live bands, either from Atlanta or elsewhere. In a contra dance, parallel lines of dancers stand opposite — or “contra to” — their partners. A dancer and his/her partner form a couple.
Through the caller’s instructions, each couple interacts with the couple next to them to form a four person “set” and each set interacts with the sets on either side of them. Over the course of a dance each couple moves up and down the hall, interacting with every other couple in their multi-set “line.”
There is no fancy footwork involved (that is the other sort of line dancing) but the instructions given by the Caller do form a series of repeating figures that dancers eventually memorize. As this happens, the Caller provides fewer and fewer prompts until he drops out entirely; leaving you, your partner, and the others in your line to finish the dance, accompanied only by the exciting, lilting, haunting, and/or pulse pounding music provided by the band.
Dancing is not mandatory this evening but we DARE you to stay seated!
7:00 p.m. – 9:00 p.m., Carriage House, All Tickets: $15.00. Preregistration and prepayment are required. Call 860-567-0857 or register online: www.whitememorialcc.org .