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@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.

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Happy dancing,

John

John Sweeney, Dancer, England john@modernjive.com 01233 625 362 http://www.contrafusion.co.uk for Dancing in Kent