Country Dance & Song Society > About CDSS > What’s New

Category: What’s New

Working on digitizing old documents

During our 2015 Centennial Campaign, the CDSS community raised $50,000 to fund digitization efforts for the CDSS collection at the University of New Hampshire. In June of this year, after two and a half years of putting so much on hold for pandemic-related business, CDSS and UNH were able to return attention to the work of making the CDSS archives digitally accessible, and the project is now underway! Read more in the CDSS News.

From the Mic with Chris Page

In episode 7 of From the Mic, Mary talks with caller and choreographer Chris Page, who has called contras and English country dance in San Diego for about 15 years.

Irish construction workers in London after World War II

Ed Miller introduces “London Town,” written by the world-renowned fiddler Kevin Burke. The song is a tribute to the many Irish laborers who helped rebuild London after World War II.

A town in the Old West with a sign reading 'Yuba Dam'

Bob Bovee introduces “Yuba Dam,” an old-time song with a humorous tale of verbal misunderstandings. 

English soldiers in battle

Kim Wallach introduces “Bibble A La Do.” Also known as “Buttermilk Hill” and “Shule Aroon,” “Shule a Ghra,” “Siúil a Rún,” and by many other names, the song laments a lad gone for a soldier—sometimes one for whom the singer has sold everything to supply with the tools of war, only for them to die anyway.

A barefoot person reads the CDSS News in a hammock

The Summer 2022 CDSS News is now available! Take a deep dive into the Irish Howle with Graham Christian; remember Lifetime Contribution Award recipient George Fogg; dance via Zoom at a Ball-That-Would-Have-Been; find out how the recorder can shine as a musical star; hear an oral history of old-time and modern Western dance from Bill Alkire; and much more.

Soldiers and horses drowning in the Kabul River

George Stephens introduces “Ford o’ Kabul River,” a poem by Rudyard Kipling set to a tune by Peter Bellamy. The song tells the story of a regiment of British Hussars who drowned while attempting to cross the river and occupy Kabul during the Second Anglo-Afghan War in 1879.

19th-century engraving of dancers at a quadrille

With the 2022 issue of Country Dance + Song Online, we are excited to present three articles on very different topics, two of them by contributors new to the journal. We will time-travel to three centuries of Anglo-American dance—all different, but all evolutionarily connected. Read more and download the issue.