Request for your fave dances that meet my criteria :D - Contra Callers

13 Oct 2025

/Yay, glad the list is up and running again, I sent this last week and was sad when it
didn't go through!/

Hi caller friends---

Would you be willing to share one or two of your favourite dances that meet my criteria as
outlined below, for my Halifax group?

This would be a great help to this volunteer caller who often struggles at the last minute
to find what she needs!

I'm striving to be better prepared, and I'm hoping this could help me build a rich
and lovely collection of suitable dances :)

If you have a dance for me, I would *super* appreciate it if you'd write the dance out
in the body of the email, (Failing that, a direct link to the dance online would be
ok..)--

Realistically because of how busy I am, if it is something I have to take multiple steps
to find (e.g. click a link which sends me to an online reference to a PDF which I then
need to download and scroll through), then I am not going to do it :D....

And if you are wondering why I don't use Contra DB - I do!! But it doesn't serve
me perfectly - if you are curious why, I have included my full explanation below.

thanking you in advance-
Kat K in Halifax

Pre-amble:

My dance group consists of a strong newcomer presence each month - to bring those folks up
to speed while keeping my regulars engaged, I generally write custom dances for the first
part of the evening.

However as both my dancers' skills and my calling skills have increased, I've
started calling pre-written dances to cap off the evening - generally we manage 2-3
"advanced" dances, with little instruction, and people are loving it.

My challenge is, what we consider "advanced" is pretty basic for you folks --and
I often struggle to find dances online that hit just the right note with my "advanced
but not THAT advanced" crowd.

So here are the criteria I am looking for:

*1. **Only **Beckets**.*
I know this is booooring but for now, this is working well for us and I don't want to
jinx it :).
/(that said, if you have a dance you think is perfect in every other way, feel free to
share and I will see if I can modify it, or tuck it away for the future!)/

*1**a** - Ideally only **Beckets** with a CW progression*, but we could try out CCW, that
would be manageable :)

*1**b** - only **Beckets** that progress in a **becketlike** fashion *(i.e. some variation
on slide to the left) - not a dance that has the dancers progress in Improper then go back
to Becket.
/(FTR I *did* try a Becket that progressed in Duple Improper last year, and it took soooo
long to get people tuned up to do it, it was not worth the effort!!)./

*2. No shadows, 2nd neighbours, double progressions...*
Too difficult for me and the dancers, based on our collective level of experience and
confidence at the moment :)

3. *Only figures that I am already familiar with*, or that would be easy for you to
explain to me and for me to explain to my dancers, haha :)
Here is what I am familiar with (beyond the basic allemandes, do-si-dos, swings, stars,
balances etc):

- Balance short wavy lines
- Rory O'Moore
- Robins Chains
- Larks Chains
- Right and Left throughs
- Heys (straightforward ones)
- Petronellas
- Mad robin sortof (we did it once and it wasn't great, but I could try again!)

*3a**. One additional difficult figure* (if you are willing to explain it) could be
interesting, but definitely not two difficult figures not listed above in the same
dance!!

*4. Prefer crowd-pleasers/greatest hits.*
Because we dance less than once a month and are relatively isolated, my dancers do not
know *any* of the contra classics!!
I would love tried-and-true crowd pleasers--- and I'm sure that nobody is going to
groan and say, "awww, not that one again!" :D

Off the top of my head, some classics we have danced already include Butter and Butterfly,
and also Petronella Morning, and people love those.
More in that vein would be great!!

thanking you once again,
Kat K
Halifax, NS, Canada
halifaxcontra.ca

*Notes on Contra DB*
I *do* use Contra DB to find dances that have certain criteria, and it is a fabulous
resource- but

a) It still takes me time to sift through dances that way, to find exactly what I need

b) I have no idea if the dance is a "crowd-pleaser" or not, and I am looking for
dances that will be a nice "reward" for my dancers at the end of the night

c) I assume it only has a fraction of all the dances that you folks use, within it.
(Though I am curious to hear-- about what percentage of all contra dances that are called
in the world each year, do you figure are archived in Contra DB?? :) )

Cheers everyone!
Kat