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Databases

  • A treasure chest filled with gold Dancing Across the Pond

    Dancing Across the Pond by Robert M. Keller, Margaret Keller Dimock and Anne Keller Geraci: 362 Original Country Dance Figures, 191 with Music, ms or Printed

  • A treasure chest filled with gold Peter Rogers Country Dance Index
  • The Barnes Book of English Country Dance Tunes Volume Three Database Barnes Three Dance Database

    Barnes Three Dance Database: A database of the tunes and associated dances in Volume Three of the Barnes Book of English Country Dance Tunes, with links to dance instruction and further information about many of the dances.

  • A treasure chest filled with gold The Performing Arts in Colonial American Newspapers, 1690-1783

    The Colonial Music Institute (compiled by Mary Jane Corry, Kate Van Winkle Keller, and Robert M. Keller): The Performing Arts in Colonial American Newspapers, 1690-1783 — This publication fills a major gap in access to eighteenth-century American sources for research in the performing arts and related humanities fields. It includes all references to music, poetry (lyrics), dance, and theater found by our readers in American newspapers, from the earliest extant copy (1690) through the end of the Revolutionary War (1783).

  • A treasure chest filled with gold Early American Secular Music and Its 
European Sources, 1589–1839

    The Colonial Music Institute (compiled by Robert M. Keller, Raoul F. Camus, Kate Van Winkle Keller, and Susan Cifaldi): Early American Secular Music and Its 
European Sources, 1589–1839: An Index — This is a series of indexes derived from a data base of musical information compiled from primary sources covering the 250 years of the initial exploration and settlement of the United States. It consists of over 75,000 entries that are sorted by text (titles, first lines, recitatives, chorus and burden), by music incipits (represented in scale degrees, stressed notes and interval sequences), with additional indexes of names and theater works.

  • A treasure chest filled with gold Dance Figures Index: American Country Dances, 1710-1830

    The Colonial Music Institute (compiled by Robert Keller): Dance Figures Index: American Country Dances, 1710-1830 — A guide to the basic figures in all American printed and manuscript longways country dances in eighteenth- and early nineteenth-century sources. It is drawn from a computer database of information which was gathered from 82 sources, 53 printed and 29 in manuscript.

  • A treasure chest filled with gold Early American Songsters, 1734-1820

    The Colonial Music Institute (compiled by Robert Keller): Early American Songsters, 1734-1820: An Index —An index of all of the known songsters currently available. The index draws heavily from Irving Lowens’ Bibliography of Songster Printed in America Before 1821 (Worcester: American Antiquarian Society, 1976), for titles and other bibliographical information. Lowens defines a songster “as a collection of three or more secular poems intended to be sung.” Most of the songsters do not include music, although many contain references to the names of tunes to which the song could be sung. This publication comprises those songs published through 1800.

  • A treasure chest filled with gold Dance Figures Index: English Country Dances, 1650-1833

    The Colonial Music Institute (compiled by Robert Keller): Dance Figures Index: English Country Dances, 1650-1833 — A guide to the basic figures in major English printed longways country dances in eighteenth and early nineteenth-century sources. This database only includes sources for dances with instruction for country dances, or dances that could be identified as such. It does not include other dance forms, such as Cotillions or Allemand or similar dances.

  • Cover of The English Dancing Master The Dancing Master, 1651-1728: An Illustrated Compendium

    Robert M. Keller: The Dancing Master, 1651-1728: An Illustrated Compendium (online database)—The Compendium is a searchable database of all known country dances published in the various editions of The Dancing Master, published by John Playford, Henry Playford and John Young, from 1651-1728 in London, with facsimiles of each “unique” dance with its music. This reference work is published by CDSS with the English Folk Dance and Song Society and the New Hampshire Library for Traditional Dance and Music at the University of New Hampshire.


Books

  • A blur of contra dancers, with band in the background Mary Dart: Contra Dance Choreography

    Mary Dart: Contra Dance Choreography: A Reflection of Social Change—Originally published by Garland Publishing, Inc., New York & London, 1995. Mary Dart’s classic study explores “the way the choreography of the contra dance, a folk dance tradition brought to us from the British Isles, has been changing, particularly over the last twenty years.” The book, based on interviews with callers, dance composers and musicians, looks at new dances, how they are composed, and what aesthetic and cultural principles underlie the choreographic choices made. 

  • Map of West Virginia Robert G. Dalsemer: West Virginia Square Dances

    Robert G. Dalsemer: West Virginia Square Dances—Originally published by Country Dance and Song Society, 1982. Dalsemer describes dance figures as done in five rural West Virginia communities in the mid- to late-1970s and reports on their regular dance events, including programming, type of audience, price and method of admission, and the traditions of figure calling and musical performance. The history of each dance event is discussed, as is their on-going process of evolution. With appendices: a list of tunes commonly played for square dances; transcriptions of calls; and tunes for caller Worley Gardner’s singing and semi-singing calls.

  • A stack of books Ted Sannella: Annotated Discography and Bibliography from Swing the Next

    Ted Sannella: Annotated Discography and Bibliography from Ted Sannella’s Swing the Next — The annotations and introduction for the Discography and Bibliography in Swing the Next (CDSS, 1996) are included here in their entirety. Swing the Next is a collection of 80 American square, contra, triplet and circle dances, the majority of them written by Ted Sannella, a master of the art of calling American traditional dances.

  • Roy Dommett playing the accordion Roy Dommett’s Morris Notes

    Roy Dommett’s Morris Notes Online Edition — the foundational resource, long out of print, available online.

  • Kentucky Mountain Square Dancing cover Patrick Napier: Kentucky Mountain Square Dancing
  • GEMS: The Best of the Country Dance and Song Society's Diamond Anniversary Music, Dance and Song Contest GEMS: The Best of CDSS’s Diamond Anniversary Music, Dance and Song Contest

Magazines


Dances and Other Resources