I've just wrapped up another year of calling dances. It's been an exhilarating, busy year. I'm planning some more verbose reflections for later, but I also wanted, this year, to go deep on the quantitative elements of calling.

https://chromamine.com/2025/01/dance-calling-by-the-numbers-2024/

It occurred to me recently that I don’t think there are any contra dances that feature a set and link figure that's popular in Scottish Country Dance. So I decided to write some!

https://chromamine.com/2024/11/set-and-link-contras/

On my summer tour with Kingfisher the organizers of one dance told me that their group would tolerate Larks/Robins for role terms, but *preferred* Ladies/Gents. After talking it over with some other callers and dancers and weighing the factors (What will feel best for me? What will be best for the dancers? What will be good for contra dance in general?) I opted to call Larks/Robins.

https://chromamine.com/2024/07/calling-a-gendered-series-gender-free/

This week I called the Nantucket's First Community Contra Dance. It was an unusual gig. The organizer is starting a contra dance community from scratch on the island. There were a small handful of experienced dancers she knew, but aside from them, the crowd was entirely new.

#ContraDance #TradFolk #Nantucket #SocialDance

https://chromamine.com/2024/05/calling-the-first-dance-in-a-community/

Called to a small but devoted crowd in Concord last night and as a rare treat it was spacious enough and with experienced enough dancers for me to call this beautiful dance composition by Erik Hoffman, titled “There is no Way to Peace; Peace is the Way” (after an A.J. Muste quote).

I’m typically not a star promenade and butterfly whirl fan, but for this dance I make an exception.

For years now, one of my pet favorites in contra dancing has been the “wowee,” a figure that involves rolling away with your neighbor across the set and immediately releasing the connection to catch your partner for a swing.

Someone told me the term and figure were both borrowed from Modern Western Square Dancing. But MWSD dancers I came across said, "Nope, that's not a figure."

#Contra #ContraDance #SocialDance

https://chromamine.com/2024/02/origin-of-the-wowee/

In 2019 I decided to get back into contra dance calling after a multi-year stretch of doing very little of it. I called one dance in December, one dance in January of 2020, and then the pandemic hit. Oops.

But when my local dances started back up in 2022 I got into it again and called five dances that year.

#contra #ContraDance #SocialDance

https://chromamine.com/2024/02/contra-calling-2022-2023/

Vraagje aan de dansers hier, naar aanleiding van een babbeltje met mijn huisgenote. In #tango is er de 'barrida', een vorm waarbij je met jouw voet de voet van je partner verschuift (zie filmpje).

Wat wij ons afvroegen: Is dit nou typisch tango, of bestaat het ook in andere dansen?
#socialdance

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZcnXRkxRJ3c

Obsessed with this performance from Roxana & Sebastián today.

https://030tango.com/video/roxana-suarez-and-sebastian-achaval-oigo-tu-voz/

Song info:
Title: Oigo tu voz
Orchestra: Ricardo Tanturi
Singer: Enrique Campos
Recorded: 25. November 1943
Composed by: Mario Canaro *
Lyrics by: Francisco García Jiménez

* Fun fact: Mario Canaro was Francisco Canaro's little brother.

Shut down a long running project today. Even though it was pretty embarrassingly unmaintained for the past several years, I'm pretty proud that people found it useful enough to keep using for nine years.

#software #SocialDance

https://dancerfly.com/

I've got a new website for my Contra Dance calling and organizing! See where I'll be calling dances in the near future. If you want to book me to call your dance/wedding/birthday/whatever, get in touch!

#ContraDance #SocialDance

https://chromamine.com/contra/

Hello #hachyderm ! My overdue #introduction.

My name is Alex and I'm a #robotics #engineer in #EmbeddedSystems. I work at a startup making #autonomous underground mapping #drones. I'm a big fan of #rustlang but my day job is in #cpp.

In my free time I #SocialDance (mainly #ContraDance) as much as possible, play #BoardGames, read/watch #scifi and tinker with projects.

Looking for an instance, I saw @molly0xfff migrate here, and it seems @nova runs a tight ship so here I am!

@wmpedersen #socialdance = a graceful way to do #socialdistancing ? Maybe not.

I started drawing these Blob-People because anatomy is freaking me out and this is an easy way of incorporating figures! This is from a series of drawings about things I missed hte most during the pandemic. "I miss the dances" #penandink #colouredpencils #socialdance #lindyhop #illustratedmusic