Country Dance & Song Society > Resources > Dance Tradition

Category: Dance Tradition

Example Codes of Conduct

Here are some of our favorite codes of conduct from other dance and music organizations to use as inspiration for your own!

Chicagoland English Country Dance
Chicago, IL; English country dance

Olympia Contra Dance
Olympia, WA; contra dance
(website currently down; working on a new link!)

DanceFlurry Organization
Albany/Saratoga Springs, NY (and surrounding areas); several types of monthly dance series and workshops, educational programs in schools and other organizations

Portland Country Dance Community
Portland, OR; contra dance, English country dance, music sessions

Ottawa Contra Dance
Ottawa, ON; contra dance

John C. Campbell Folk School
Brasstown, NC; contra dance, English country dance, community/family dance, many other music and craft workshops

Raise the Rafters
Rhododendron, OR; singing

Have a great policy you’d like to share? Submit it here!

Contra Dance Map

A Google map with many local dances in the US and Canada. Also searchable by zip code, for special events, and for dances using non-gendered calling. Created by Jeff Kaufman.

Squares from Northern Junket

Colin Hume presents descriptions and commentary on all of the 200+ square dances in Northern Junket, a magazine published by Ralph Page from 1949 to 1985.

Lesson Plans for Educators

The CDSS Educators Task Group presents lesson plans on a variety of topics in traditional music and dance.

New England Dancing Masters Teaching Blog

A blog for teachers wanting to teach traditional dance, including videos of dances suitable for classrooms.

Square Dance History with David Millstone

Experience the rich history and regional variety of square dancing in this in-depth, three part video series.

With photographs, audio, and video, we’ll travel:

from 17^th century France to Civil War ballrooms
from New England Grange halls to Texas cowboy balls
and from Newfoundland to New Mexico

to explore and discuss how this dance form became a staple of American popular culture.

Shared Weight: Positional Calling Discussion List

This list is for anyone interested in exploring positional calling within traditional dance (contra, squares, ECD, community, family dance, Irish ceili, Scottish ceilidh, etc).

Our goal is to support each other by discussing topics of interest to callers specifically in relation to positional calling. We encourage callers to also join some of the other Shared Weight lists as those communities are valuable resources for other aspects of calling.

Shared Weight: Growing Up Trad Discussion List

Growing up Trad! is an email discussion list for caregiving adults who love traditional dance, music and song. The focus of our conversation is around nurturing these traditions within our families and in particular with the children in our care.

Shared Weight: Dance Organizers Discussion List

This mailing list welcomes organizers and those interested in organizing any form of traditional social dance. This includes contra, English country, traditional squares (e.g., Appalachian, New England, Quebecois, Cape Breton, etc), community/family/barn, ceili, Balfolk, and more!

Anti-Racism and the Folk Revival

This article focuses on racism within our traditions, in particular relating to the work of Cecil Sharp and his contemporaries, and on how our history informs our present and should influence our future.

From Ezra Fisher