At work, we have a Fun Friday thing where someone does a 1/2 hr presentation on something of interest. It could be travel, a hobby, or whatever. They're asking me to do one on contra dance. In the before times when we could do it in person, I would have taught them a simple dance to recorded music. But I'm trying to think about what to say about contra in 1/2 an hour that'll be fun. Someone else did latin ballroom dancing and they tried to share their screen and play a bunch of videos, which was a total fail, but then they shared the youtube links and people loved it. Contra isn't quite as sexy as that, and he was doing performances rather than taking videos of salsa at the club, so it was pretty impressive.

Thoughts? I know a little about contra history, but I'm not super passionate about it. I can certainly play a bunch of the great music. I can show clips of large events (Folklife), techno contra, family dances, and other variants (tractor contas, anyone). 

One thing I'd love to do is to get people up and dancing, but I realize that's probably not going to work. I regularly attend Zoom dances, but I don't think a bunch of non-dancers will just get up and have fun having never learned any of the moves. If anyone's got a great dance that beginners can do (no terminology) and that's designed for singles or the occasional couple, please share. Luckily a bunch of singles dances are being written now, but they mostly assume an experienced audience.

Cheers,

Adam