Informal Contra in Davis Square IV

September 8th, 2010
calling, outdoor_contra
I organized another outdoor contra dance yesterday evening. I think it went pretty well. We had good numbers for musicians, dancers, and callers. It was having lots of callers that really made the dance easy for me, as I didn't have to worry about my voice much and I could play fiddle. This time I tried to do easier dances in the past, primarily because there tend to be a decent number of new people, but also because dancers seem to need the calling to go longer when outside and I especially want to minimise calling to go easy on my voice.

At one point chris decided to call a square. Aside from taking a little longer than ideal to teach, he had to keep calling the whole time because that's the way squares work. Really ripped up his voice. I'll have to remember not to try something like that.

We danced from 7:30 to 9:30 with no break, doing something like: (I've stopped putting calling notes in a separate section)

Comment via: facebook, substack

Recent posts on blogs I like:

Variable fonts aren't universally supported

I make a lot of webpages. I also use Lockdown Mode on iOS and MacOS for a bit of extra security. Sometimes I realize that I forgot to test on Safari and it looks like crap, or I test and don’t notice that there’s been a problem for months (as was the case…

via Home June 27, 2026

Ozy in Asterisk on coping with AI doom

I wrote an article for Asterisk Magazine about people who believe in AI superintelligence soon, and who are chill about it.

via Thing of Things June 24, 2026

Fiddle Practice

For a while I wasn't learning how to play violin very well because whenever it was time to practice I didn't want to. I didn't really like practicing, because (1) it's boring, (2) I have better things to do, and (3) actually I guess there …

via Anna Wise's Blog Posts May 3, 2026

more     (via openring)