Hi, I'm Harris Lapiroff.

A typical evening of contra dancing starts with a beginner workshop. Sometimes this workshop is taught by one of the organizers of the dance, but often it’s taught by the caller. Usually workshops are between 15 and 30 minutes long, short enough that an instructor has to be extremely selective about what the most important things are to convey to dancers. One thing that I love and find fascinating is that contra dancing hasn’t converged on a standard answer to this. There’s some common practices, but workshops vary widely from instructor to instructor.

My workshop is on the figure-heavy end. I try to get in a reasonable number of figures so I only have to teach a few figures on the floor during the evening – and have a strong basis for teaching those. I intersperse cultural notes as well as technique and consent tips throughout.

Nothing is original – it’s all been pulled from other callers’ workshops I’ve observed, their writings that I’ve read, and conversations with callers and dancers. I’ve been iterating on it for as long as I’ve been calling, but it’s not perfect. I keep working on it. What I’ve described here is also my ideal workshop where I haven’t forgotten anything. In practice there’s a lot of information to convey in a short time, so I usually forget something or other. This is a snapshot of what it looks like in 2024.

I do some amount of adapting my workshop for the crowd and the amount of time I have, but this is a typical script for a good-sized crowd (8+ dancers) of mostly beginners and a 20 minute slot.

Welcome, Circles, and Giving Weight

I start with the dancers in a circle. I welcome new dancers, tell them we’re glad they’re here, and advise experienced dancers who happen to be in the crowd that it’s their job to make sure the new dancers want to come back. I say, “I’m going to throw a bunch of different figures at you over the course of this workshop – you might not remember them all, but that’s OK. We’re just trying to get the motion in your body.” The most important thing to me is that the new dancers feel at ease and as confident as possible.

We take hands and circle left, then back to the right. As we’re circling I explain that the basic step of contra dancing is a smooth walking step. I say that one common thing beginning dancers often do is bounce a lot as they’re dancing, which can be fun, but also will tire you and your partners out faster. “You should glide across the floor.” Sometimes, after we’ve done the circles, I’ll exclaim, “Congratulations! You’ve done your first two contra dance figures.” Usually that’ll get a little giggle.

I explain giving weight. “Bend your elbows a little bit to feel some tension with your neighbors. If you tug, you should feel them move a bit. You don’t want to be pulling them over, just enough that you can feel where they are in space.” Then I ask us to circle left and right again while giving weight and “notice how we can go around a little more quickly, a little more smoothly.” I say that I’ll point out places to give weight in the other figures we do this evening.

Easy Couple Figures

I ask someone to demo each figure with me, typically pulling a different person from the circle each time. Between each figure I ask if anyone has questions about anything we’ve covered so far.

The first time I demo a figure with someone I also use it as an opportunity to explain the dynamics of asking someone to dance. “Anyone can ask anyone to dance at a contra dance. It doesn’t matter your gender, experience level, whatever. Anyone can also decline a dance. If someone says no to you, that’s OK! You don’t need to know their reason. Take it gracefully and move on to finding another partner. But this person said yes to me, so we’re going to dance.”

First I teach an allemande. I say, “take right hands in like an arm wrestling grip, but don’t actually arm wrestle.” I explain that you don’t want to grip, but you do want to give a little weight. You always want to be sure the person you’re dancing with can pull away from you if they want. Recently I say a line I swiped from watching Liz Nelson teach, “Your thumbs get a vacation tonight.”

Next I say, “I bet you can guess what an allemande left is,” and the dancers invariably can. A fairly new addition to my workshop: I ask them to allemande right their current partner 1½, turn away from their partner, look at the next person in the circle, and allemande them left once around. In the past I had dancers stick with the same partner through the workshop, but this doesn’t take much additional time and has some strong advantages:

1. It introduces them to fractions and progression,
2. It ensures they dance with multiple people in the workshop, which helps prevent two dancers from reinforcing each other’s mistakes through the workshop, and
3. It breaks up beginner couples who came together and introduces them to new people they might dance with later.

I teach a right shoulder round as the same motion as an allemande right, but without hands. This is where I introduce eye contact and emphasize that it is optional: “You can make eye contact with your partner or if you don’t want to do that you can look at their forehead or their shoulder.” I explain that a left shoulder round is rare so we’re not even going to practice it because I don’t want them thinking about it.

I teach a do si do as the same path as a right shoulder round, but instead of facing each other you keep facing the wall you’re facing. This is also where I introduce the concept of flourishes. I’ll say to my demo partner, “please do your do si do as usual no matter what I do.” And we’ll do si do, them walking around me while I twirl as I circle them. “You might notice experienced dancers doing all sorts of twirls on the floor. Those are called flourishes and they are an optional part of contra dancing. Don’t be confused by other people doing them – if they are doing them correctly, you can do your figure as usual and you will both end up where you are supposed to be at the end. If you see a flourish that you think you might be able to do – maybe ask someone to demonstrate it for you between dances. If you try it, be sure not to run into anyone and to make sure you end up in your spot on time.”

The Swing

Next I teach the swing which I find is the trickiest part of the workshop. I say (assuming):

This is the first figure I’m going to teach you where roles matter. We have two roles in contra dancing. At this dance we call them Lark and Robin [or whatever terms the dance is using]. Decide on roles with your current partner – don’t worry too much about it, I’m going to ask you to try both.

With a demo partner I describe ballroom position as we get into it¹. I emphasize that the motion of the swing is the same as the motion we’ve just done for the right allemande and the right shoulder round with both partners walking forward and then we demo it. I ask everyone to try it.

Up to here, I don’t usually get many questions, but people often have lots of questions about the swing. In large crowds this can be the moment of my workshop that eats up the most time. If you’re an experienced dancer observing, this is the moment where you can be most helpful in saving me time by assisting couples struggling with the swing. The most common issue I see is couples struggling to understand how both people can be walking forward at the same time in ballroom position.

When we’ve gotten through everyone’s questions, I’ll ask another partner to demo with me and I’ll explain the buzz step, pivoting around your inside feet while kicking off with your outside. Because I suspect attempting to buzz step is one thing that often leads beginners to hop, I mention for the second time that the goal is to keep the movement smooth and feel like you’re gliding around.

At this point I explain that we call the roles Lark and Robin (assuming I’m calling a Lark/Robin dance) because the lark starts on the left and the robin starts on the right². “You’ll also want to make sure when you’re swinging you end with the lark on the left and the robin on the right.” I demo how to do this by paying attention to which end in their partnership is the pointy end and making sure they end a swing with the pointy end facing into the dance before they open up.

Finally, I recall the concept of flourishes and teach them to recognize an invitation to twirl out of a swing and how to decline a twirl by holding their joined hand down.

Promenade, Courtesy Turn, and Longways Formation

I virtually always get through everything up to this point, but this moment is where I may start running out of time before the dance should begin. That’s OK. Everything else, including longways improper formation can be taught on the dance floor with the assistance of experienced dancers. Whenever I notice that I have only a minute left, I skip straight to the “final notes” section of the workshop. But if I still have time, I proceed.

I ask the dancers to settle on one role for the rest of the workshop. With a demo partner I demonstrate promenade position. I always demo the “courtesy turn” promenade position unless dance organizers have made it clear to me that’s not what they use at that dance. (Most dances I call use either that or “it varies.”) I will sometimes say, “People do this in different ways, but this is the one I’m teaching tonight.” This allows me to teach promenade position and the courtesy turn immediately after. Once they are in promenade position I ask the lark to back up while the robin walks forward to revolve in a circle. This is a courtesy turn.

I find that it’s helpful to teach the courtesy turn separately from any figure that uses it – partially because it reduces the stacking confusion of learning two figures at once and partially because if this is as far as I get, I can easily teach a right and left through or a chain from the stage as long as the dancers already know how to courtesy turn.

1. Something else I saw at Liz Nelson’s workshop (Liz, if you’re reading this, I love your workshop) that I’ve been meaning to adopt but haven’t yet: she tells dancers that the lark is whoever is standing on the left in their partnership, the robin is on the right. She has them stand side by side and put their near hands on each others back and then join their far hands – which is a pretty slick way to get dancers into ballroom position quickly. ↩︎

2. If I adopt Liz’s technique I’ll get to this sooner. ↩︎