Hello Fellow Callers!
This post has 2 purposes: to invite you all to the dance, and also to drum up interested
callers who might want to donate their calling to future dances (which will be the 2nd
& 4th Saturday of each month at 7:30PM Eastern time in North America).
Our first attempt at a Zoom contra early in May went great, and we’ve decided to do this
twice a month for the duration!
Our first (minimally publicized) dance hit our 100 participant Zoom limit (and 67 were
still dancing at the end, so they must have been having fun!). This time we have a 500
participant limit and we’re publicizing it far and wide.
More info and the link to join appears in announcement below. This week’s callers will be
Bev Bernbaum, Drew Delaware, and me (Becky Liddle).
Hope to see you there!
Becky
Dancing in Isolation - A Virtual Contra Dance by Zoom,
Saturday May 23, 2020, at 7:30PM Eastern
Contra dance alone or with other dancers in your household, along with dancers across the
continent! We'll be dancing to recorded music (due to tech limitations) and live
calling. Dancing with imaginary people ("ghosts") is challenging, so we are
assuming everyone is a reasonably experienced contra dancer. There will be no beginners’
lesson. But the good news is that when you dance alone in your living room, the contra
line is exactly where you imagine it, and unexpected moves become glorious new
choreography! Everyone is welcome to join!
https://zoom.us/j/99530765467?pwd=YUEyZms5ZnlZbDlqa0tvREp1QkZyZz09
<https://zoom.us/j/99530765467?pwd=YUEyZms5ZnlZbDlqa0tvREp1QkZyZz09>
Meeting ID: 995 3076 5467
Password: 007
Join the Zoom meeting any time between 7:00 and 7:30PM Eastern on Saturday, but try to
join by 7:20 if possible. There will be an introduction to the dance at 7:25 and dancing
will begin promptly at 7:30 Eastern.
We hope to have these dances every 2nd and 4th Saturday evening until we can dance in
person again. You can keep track of scheduled dances here or on the Toronto Contra Dance
Facebook page:
https://www.facebook.com/TorontoContraDance
<https://www.facebook.com/TorontoContraDance> . At our first dance we hit our 100
participant limit, but this time we can have up to 500 participants, so tell your contra
dancing friends, and feel free to repost this announcement to your local contra dance
websites!
Participation is free, but if you enjoy the dance, we ask that you make a donation (in an
amount you are comfortable with) to benefit freelance artists in our music & dance
community who are struggling with the loss of income due to COVID-19 shutting down all our
in-person events.
CDSS has a donation page here:
https://www.cdss.org/community/covid19/send-love-to-freelancers
<https://www.cdss.org/community/covid19/send-love-to-freelancers>
where you can donate to a freelance musician or caller. You are welcome to choose an
artist of your choice, but the list loads in random order, so you can also simply donate
to whoever is top on the list when you load the page, knowing that others will be donating
to someone else, and everybody ends up getting a little help in a difficult time. Or, if
you like the specific music we play at the dance, we encourage you to donate to (or buy
music from) the musicians whose music we use. We will post a list of those artists to the
Toronto Contra Dance Facebook page after each dance. Please come to the dance, and
afterwards decide what it was worth to you, and give generously to keep the music going
until we can all meet in joy on the other side of this pandemic.
The dance is organized by Becky Liddle, ably assisted by Drew Delaware, with a great deal
of help from other Toronto area folks. Becky happens to be president of Toronto Contra
Dance, but this dance is only loosely associated with TCD. So if you have any complaints,
please blame Becky or Drew, not TCD! :-)