Dance Weekends: How Much do you Play?

November 11th, 2019
contra
In writing about bringing my kids with me to play dance weekends I was thinking about how many hours you're usually on stage. Here are my last few dance weekends, with hours of playing time:


(sheet)

Weekends were mostly contra, but organizers also asked for workshops (5 of 17), waltzing (5 of 17), ECD (2 of 17), and concerts (2 of 17). In general, being the only band meant more playing:

If you figure 4.5 contra dances to the hour, 5-14hr means 23 to 63 sets. The Free Raisins have about 43 sets, enough for all but two of the seventeen weekends. Through some combination of "let's make something up on the fly" and "let's play an old set we don't play anymore" we can stretch it, though 14hr of contras is really quite a lot. Kingfisher only has ~15 sets so far, about what you need for a regular evening, so we'll need to keep putting things together.

Referenced in: Dance Weekend Schedule Checklist

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