Country Dance and Song Society English & American Dance Week at Pinewoods August 29 - September 5, 1998

English & American Dance Week at Pinewoods August 29 - September 5, 1998 Program Director: Cathie Whitesides Staff: Peter Amidon Kathy Anderson Laurie Andres* Jan Burdick Harry Cowgill Larry Edelman Brad Foster* Barbara Greenberg Jonathan Jensen Paul Kotapish Bob McQuillen Gene Murrow Leah Weiss *Advisors plus: Lisa Greenleaf Sharon McNamara

Program Description: [Back to Top]
This program offers a rich array of English and American country dancing, English clog and rapper, plus singing and band workshops. Larry Edelman will call Theme-A-Day Squares for all. Gene Murrow will lead an Advanced English country dance class, looking at challenging old favorites and some new dances. Gene will also lead Modern Elegance, a class for everyone focusing on contemporary choreographies, and English Dance Band class. Brad Foster will lead an Introduction to English country dancing and Brad's Fancies, great English dances from early to modern times with some traditional and ceilidh dances. Kathy Anderson will call Contras: Old Favorites to New Zingers, and All-American Contras and Squares. Kathy also hosts the callers open mic/open band. Peter Amidon will lead harmony singing; Jan Burdick will teach rapper sword dancing; Harry Cowgill will teach English clog; and, Laurie Andres will lead American Dance Band.

Come join in the fun. For English or American dance lovers, step dancers, musicians and callers the week offers an opportunity to specialize and solidly expand your skills. For a more relaxing week, you may want to sample the variety of offerings and relish the time to socialize, jam and enjoy the beauty of Pinewoods.

Your day will include five workshop periods, tea time (both elegant and relaxing -- not to be missed!) and a Community Gathering where campers and staff can give mini-performances or demonstrations and share items of interest, history, jokes, etc. There is time for canoeing, parties, swimming, browsing the bookstore, evening dances and more. Most evenings will start with 15 minutes of couple dancing. Evening dances will include a variety of styles and some will have a featured theme. After the dance there will be, on different nights, a Community Song Swap, skit night, a couple dance party, an auction, jamming and other such activities and parties. On Tuesday night there is a camperrun evening dance. Plus this year we offer Larry Edelman's American Dance Callers Week at Pinewoods.

Our wonderful staff musicians include: Laurie Andres (accordion and piano), Peter Amidon (melodeon), Barbara Greenberg (violin), Jonathan Jensen (piano), Paul Kotapish (guitar and mandolin), Bob McQuillen (piano), Leah Weiss (fiddle) and Cathie Whitesides (fiddle).

English & American Dance Week at Pinewoods Tentative Schedule:
9:00 - 10:15
Advanced English Country Dance	Gene
Intro to English Country Dance	Brad
English Clogging 1: Hornpipe	Harry
10:30 - 11:45
All-American Contras and Squares	Kathy
Brad's Fancies:	Brad
American Dance Band	Laurie
9:00 - 12:00
American Dance Callers Course	Larry Edelman
1:45 - 2:45
Modern Elegance	Gene Murrow
A-Theme-A-Day Squares	Larry Edelman
English Clog 2: Waltz	Harry Cowgill
3:00 - 4:00
Rapper Sword Dance	Jan Burdick
English Band	Gene Murrow
Contras: Old Favorites to New Zingers	Kathy Anderson
4:00
Tea in the Camphouse
4:15 - 4:45
Community Gathering
4:45 - 5:45
Harmony Singing	Peter Amidon
Open Mic/Open Band	Kathy Anderson
8:00
Couple Dances
8:15
Evening Dance Party

Class Descriptions: [Back to Top]
Rapper Sword Dance -- Jan Burdick
Rapper, a fast, flashy dance form, evolved in the Northeast of England. Dancers are linked by flexible, twohandled (unsharpened) metal swords. Jan, a Half Moon Sword member for 15 years and coach for other teams, runs a class that is energetic and open to all levels. She teaches fooling, a role she dances with zest, as an integral and important part of rapper. Sets are made flexible enough to get everyone involved, but a weeklong commitment is quite helpful. Emphasis is on learning figures that flow dynamically, with some basic stepping.

English Clog 1 and 2 -- Harry Cowgill
Harry is the principal teacher of Sam Sherry's repertoire, and a three time Lancashire and Cheshire clog champion in his own right. He will teach two classes: for beginners, a class of Sam's hornpipes and for more experienced cloggers, a class of waltz clog.

Advanced English Country Dance -- Gene Murrow
This class will take a detailed look at the style and structure of the more challenging old favorites and some new dances from Gene's finely-honed repertoire of dances gathered through a 30year involvement with English country dance. A wellfounded familiarity with the basic figures is required.

An Introduction to English Country Dance -- Brad Foster
Brad will take you through a variety of choice dances and cover all the basic figures and elements of style helpful to make English country dancing thoroughly fun and pleasurable. Everyone is welcome.

Modern Elegance -- Gene Murrow
This class will feature recently composed English country dances by contemporary dancing masters who have adapted the elements of historical dance to create choreographies that are beautiful works of art. This class is open to all.

Brad's Fancies -- Brad Foster
Brad draws from a vast repertoire to bring us English country dances that are historical, modern, traditional or ceilidh. The common thread that links them is Brad's ability to make them fun and lovely to dance.

Contras: Old Favorites to New Zingers -- Kathy Anderson
Kathy is a fervent advocate of welltaught, wellchoreographed dances. She brings her eclectic repertoire to this class of classics and new, quirky and fun contras. Her warmth and friendly style pointers make contras flowing and sociable.

All-American Contras and Squares -- Kathy Anderson
This class will include dances from contemporary writers.

Harmony Singing -- Peter Amidon
Peter, who has known shape note singing for 23 years and is nationally recognized for his outstanding song leadership, includes Sacred Harp and other shape note, gospel and secular American and English traditional songs with arranged harmonies. The class features mainly unaccompanied singing in three or four part harmony and will include some work on learning how to make up harmonies by ear. Although there will be written music for some of the pieces, music reading skills, while helpful, are not necessary.

English Dance Band -- Gene Murrow
Open to all, this workshop is designed to get you playing whether you read music or not. Some facility on your instrument is recommended. All instruments are encouraged, including percussion, squeeze box, recorder, etc. and Gene has a band book that provides a helpful resource when written music is used.

American Dance Band -- Laurie Andres
Or The Big Bang Theory of Dance Bands! This workshop will explore phrasing tunes to make them danceable, maintaining a tight sound at a happy tempo, and choosing tunes and medleys that work for a dance and your own band. Ability to play a few tunes at dance tempo is recommended, but everyone is welcome.

Theme-A-Day Squares -- Larry Edelman
Larry is an avid dance researcher and has intensively studied the traditional dances of Southwestern Pennsylvania. Each day this class will explore different dimensions of traditional square dance choreography and regional styles.

Program Description Class Descriptions & Schedule Top

413-268-7426 FAX: 413-268-7471

Country Dance and Song Society 132 Main St/PO Box 338 Haydenville, MA 01039-0338 Office Hours 9:30am - 5:00pm EST

http://www.cdss.org/