Dear Rickey and the gang, I have always used a database to keep track of my dances. I find it to be a powerful, fluid, and practical tool for calling and memorizing. The fields I use most are: Title author date entered learned from: difficulty InMyRepertoire? (yes, almost, no) This is very useful for generating the big list of dances you know to choose from for an evening or weekend. It is also useful for choosing dances you DON'T know to work on memorizing. Temp# (this is a temporary number I use for printing out an evening program: I number the dances for that evening 1-12 and export that data into Word to make the evening's dance list for the musicians. I number all the OTHER dances I MIGHT call as '20' and put them on a separate list for me, and leave all the remaining dances in the database at '0'.) ForExport (yes, no) (This is an alternative way to choose dances for export. I use this to generate a list of dances to print out for memorizing.) BandSuggestions (this is what kind of music I want: jig or reel, specific suggestions of tunes, some notes on the dance itself. A1a (This, and the 7 below, are the dance instructions. I print out the dance instructions for the dances I have chosen for the evening as a reference, although usually I teach and call from memory.) A1b A2a A2b B1a B1b B2a B2b Notes (miscellaneous notes on the dance - background/teaching tips) When I do a dance weekend I print out: List of dances (titles/author) I might call alphabetically Separate pages of the instructions to those dances Same list organized by difficulty. (easy, moderate, challenging) Memorizing your dances means that all you really need for any particular evening of dancing is the name and author of your dances. I find having a database makes it much easier to be proactive about memorizing, since I can very easily find the dances I have already memorized, and also easily make a list of dances that I want to work on memorizing. The database I use is Provue's Panorama, although if I were starting over again now I would use Filemaker Pro. -P -- Peter Amidon peter(a)amidonmusic.com 20 Willow Street Brattleboro, VT 05301 802-257-1006 cell: 917-922-5462 http://www.amidonmusic.com http://www.dancingmasters.com

You might check the database used for American Country Dances On Line (<http://arcserv.astro.washington.edu/dances/default.html>). The Filemaker Pro database, including a few hundred dances, is available for downloading. I use this database, although I have modified it somewhat. Kris Jensen Albuquerque, NM On 12 Jun 2007, at 6:14 AM, Rickey wrote: