Over the last 100 years the English Folk Dance & Song Society has published
many great dances in its magazine "English Dance & Song" and its
predecessor
"E.F.D.S. News".
Having been given a pile of old magazines by Chris Turner, John Sweeney has
started a project to make these wonderful dances available to everyone via
the Internet at
http://www.contrafusion.co.uk/Dances.html#eds.
There are over 60 dances presented so far, covering all genres. They are
mostly contemporary compositions, but there are also articles about
traditional dances and interpretations of much older dances.
If you can provide any more information about any of these dances, their
composers, their style, their tempo or their history, then please contact
John Sweeney at info(a)contrafusion.co.uk so that he can add that information
to the Web pages.
For each dance John provides both the original page from the magazine and
his own interpretation of the dance. Words such as "Balance",
"Allemande"
and "Swing" have been used by different dancing masters to mean many
different things. Styles, tempos and nomenclature vary depending on the
century, the country, the dance genre and countless other factors. John has
tried to put the dances into words that he uses when he is calling today,
and to provide other hints where possible, often using other sources. Of
course you are welcome to interpret the dances any way you wish. John hopes
you have fun calling and dancing some of these great old dances.
The original pages from the magazines are reproduced with kind permission of
the English Folk Dance & Song Society. The dances were submitted to the
magazine so as to reach as wide an audience as possible. Publishing them in
this way will help to further that aim.
= = = = =
Happy dancing,
John
John Sweeney, Dancer, England john(a)modernjive.com 01233 625 362
http://www.contrafusion.co.uk for Dancing in Kent