In the late 1980s, I had a college friend who went contra dancing who tried
for a couple of years to get me to go. I had no reluctance, but I normally
had other commitments on Saturday evenings, so it required extra effort and
I never tried especially hard to make it happen. The summer between
This is a long response, so here is the nutshell:
I had a false start with 10 years between my first and second dance (age
18/age 28). At my second dance I swallowed hook, line and sinker, though
the first few years of dancing were nomadic and dicey due to life events,
including the pandemic.
I started dancing square dances in upstate New York as a kid. Every Saturday
evening in the summer local musicians and callers would run the dance. It was
an easy way to have contact with the girls for a shy guy. In college in the
50s was the beginning of the club dance movement. I went to
I eased into contra. I do count my introduction to square dancing in
grade school and junior high school gym classes, starting 65 years ago,
as my gateway. I thoroughly enjoyed the activity. In college, my
fraternity held a couple of square dances. Fresh out of grad school in
1978, I had
I started consistently attending international folk dancing in Austin after
graduating from UT. The group had a delightful tradition—not only did they
alternate line dances with couple dances, but after the break the first
dance was always a contra, called by Chuck Roth. I looked forward to that
That's a great question! I expect a lot of us will have interesting stories
to share.
(One thing to keep in mind in reading all of these is that they are going
through a filter of which of us got enough into contra that at some point
we decided to subscribe to an organizers mailing list,
My first time, I attended at the invitation of a friend and coworker. She
basically invited the entire staff at our workplace during our weekly
meeting. This was in Louisville.
I was recently separated, and I knew I needed some positive socialization,
so I showed up. I didn't see my friend, but I
