Hostname: page-component-78c5997874-m6dg7 Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-08T02:54:25.019Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Performance, Transformation, and Community: Contra Dance in New England

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  22 July 2014

Dorothea E. Hast
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Extract

This article is part of a larger work in progress in which I am exploring meanings of community, tradition, and performance practice among contra dancers, callers, and musicians, and looking at this material from a local, regional, and national perspective (1). In this article I analyze the contra dance world as a community built around expressive culture and discuss some of the ways in which community is formed on the dance floor and maintained through the regular repetition of dancing and music making at specific dance events. I will look at context as well as at aesthetic, behavioral, and social factors, in order to see how the processes of performance create multiple dimensions of meaning for those involved—processes that lead to the formation of community. Because participants are engaged with actions associated with creativity, identity, and learning, each will have his/her own experience of what this “community” means. The continuous interplay between individual experience and group interaction during performance, seen as a subtext to a relationship between marginal group and dominant culture, represents a complex cultural microcosm empowered by many voices.

Type
Articles
Information
Dance Research Journal , Volume 25 , Issue 1 , Spring 1993 , pp. 21 - 32
Copyright
Copyright © Congress on Research in Dance 1993

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Abbott, Phillip.Seeking Many Inventions. Tennessee: University of Tennessee Press, 1987.Google Scholar
Appadurai, Arjun.Korom, Frank, Mills, Margaret, (eds). Gender, Genre, and Power in South Asian Expressive Traditions. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1991.Google Scholar
Bauman, Richard.Story, Performance and Event. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1986.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Bealle, John. American Folklore Revival: A study of an old-time music and dance community. PhD dissertation, Indiana University, 1989.Google Scholar
Behague, Gerard.(ed.). Performance Practice. Westport, Connecticut: Greenwood Press, 1984.Google Scholar
Blaustein, Richard J. Traditional Music and Social Change: The Old Time Fiddlers Association Movement in the United States. PhD dissertation, Indiana University, 1975.Google Scholar
Briggs, Charles L.Competence in Performance. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1988.Google Scholar
Connerton, Paul.How Societies Remember. Cambridge-Cambridge University Press, 1989.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Cowan, Jane.Dance and the Body Politic in Northern Greece. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1990.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Csikszentmihalyi, Mihaly. “The flow experience and its significance for human psychology,” Optimal Experience. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1988.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Denisoff, R. Serge.Great Day Coming. Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1971.Google Scholar
Finnegan, Ruth.The hidden musicians. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1989.Google Scholar
Fix, Penn.Contradancing in the Northwest. Self published, 1991.Google Scholar
Frith, Simon. “Towards an aesthetic of popular music,” in Music and Society., eds. Leppert, and McClary, . Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1987.Google Scholar
Ford, Henry, and Lovett, Benjamin. Good Morning. Dearborn, Michigan: The Dearborn Publishing Company, 1926.Google Scholar
Guilcher, Jean Michel. La Contradanse et les Renouvellements de la Danse Francaise. Paris: Mouton and Co., 1969.Google Scholar
Heilman, Samuel.The People of the Book. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1987.Google Scholar
Herndon, Marcia and McLeod, Norma. The Ethnography of Musical Performance. Norwood, Pennsylvania: Norwood Editions, 1980.Google Scholar
Keller, Kate and Sweet, Ralph. A Choice Selection of American Country Dances of the Revolutionary Era 1775–1795. New York: Country Dance and Song Society, 1975.Google Scholar
Kelly, John R.Leisure Identities and Interactions. London: George Allen and Unwin, 1983.Google Scholar
Kotzsch, Ronald. “Invitation To a Ball,” Country Dance & Song Society News., 108 (September/October 1992), 10.Google Scholar
Laufman, Dudley and Nash, Corinne. Dick Richardson Old Time New England Fiddler. Keene, New Hampshire: Historical Society of Cheshire County, 1992.Google Scholar
Leppert, Richard and McClary, Susan (eds). Music and Society. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1987.Google Scholar
MacPherson, William A. The Music of the English Country Dance 1651–1728. PhD dissertation, Harvard University, 1984.Google Scholar
Medve, Tom. “What's in a Name?“, Dance Gypsy. 1 (April 1990), 1.Google Scholar
Nevell, Richard.A Time to Dance. New York: St. Martin's Press, 1977.Google Scholar
Novack, Cynthia.Sharing the Dance. Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1990.Google Scholar
Novack, Cynthia. “The Processes of Perception in Three Dancing Bodies” in Dance and Meaning: A Communications Approach., ed. Diane Freedman. Illinois: University of Illinois Press, 1993.Google Scholar
Parkes, Tony. ContraDanceCalling. Bedford, Massachusetts: Hands Four Books, 1992.Google Scholar
Qureshi, Regula. Sufi Music of India and Pakistan: Sound, Context and Meaning in Qawwali. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1986.Google Scholar
Qureshi, Regula. “Musical Sound and Contextual Input: A Performance Model for Musical Analysis,” Ethnomusicology., (Winter 1987), 56–86.Google Scholar
Reyes-Schramm, Adelaida. The Role of Music in the interaction of Black Americans and Hispanos in New York City's East Harlem. PhD dissertation, Columbia University, 1975.Google Scholar
Royce, Anya Peterson. The Anthropology of Dance. Bloomington: Indian University Press, 1977.Google Scholar
Schechner, Richard.PerformanceTheory. New York: Routledge, 1988.Google Scholar
Seeger, Anthony. “Sing for Your Sister, The Structure and Performance of Suya Akia“ in The Ethnography of Musical Performance., eds. Herndon, and McLeod, , 7–42. Norwood, PA: Norwood Editions, 1980.Google Scholar
Simmel, Georg.The Web of Group-Affiliations. Trans. by Bendix, Reinhard, Glencoe, , Illinois: The Free Press, 1955.Google Scholar
Slobin, Mark. “Micromusics of the West: A Comparative Approach,” Ethnomusicology. 36–1, (Winter 1992), 1–88.Google Scholar
Spencer, Paul (ed.). Society and the Dance. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1985.Google Scholar
Staub, Shalom and Chris, Musello. “Network Analysis and the Ethnographic Study of Dance: American Israeli Folk Dancing,” Jewish Folklore and Ethnology Newsletter. 8–3, (1986), 8–13.Google Scholar
Stone, Ruth.Let the Inside Be Sweet. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1982.Google Scholar
Taylor, Dave. “The Story of Lovett Hall,” Northern Junket. 13–12, (September 1981), 1–6.Google Scholar
Tolman, Beth and Ralph, Page. The Country Dance Book. Brattleboro Vermont: The Stephen Green Press, 1976. (orig. ed. 1937).Google Scholar
Tolman, Newton.Quick Tunes and Good Times. Dublin, New Hampshire: William Bauhan, 1972.Google Scholar
Turner, Victor. From Ritual to Theatre. New York: PAJ Publications, 1982.Google Scholar
Turner, Victor and Edward, Bruner (eds.). The Anthropology of Experience. Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1986.Google Scholar
Woolf, Andrew. The Fiddling Festival: Revivalist Old-Time Music Jam Sessions at Southern fiddle Conventions. PhD dissertation, Tufts University, 1990.Google Scholar