Resources
I've been asked for helpful links so that you have another way to connect to the dances (but please don't look at them until you've come to a dance or it will more likely confuse you).
If you are teaching yourself to call or are starting your own dance group, there are two resources I strongly recommend: Simple Pleasures and 21 Easy English Country Dances. Simple Pleasures requires separate purchases for book and CD ($15 each), but the 21 Easy ECD book comes with a cd ($20 total). Simple Pleasures is the 3rd book & CD in the Bare Necessities collection. You can find most, if not all, on the CDSS website: http://store.cdss.org/
Where do we dance?
If you are travelling, there's this nifty map that lets you locate nearby dances: http://map.cdss.org/
If it's not on that list, it might be on this one: http://www-ssrl.slac.stanford.edu/~winston/ecd/hotbeds.htmlx
Costume thoughts:
For Women
Analysis on various female regency patterns: http://www.songsmyth.com/patternsgowns.html
Fudging the time period: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5KKViqeaD9c
For Men:
Analysis on various men's regency patterns: http://www.songsmyth.com/menspatterns.html
Fudging the time period: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VLTQtgsM1CI
More: I mention costume thoughts here and here
For musicians, I recommend purchasing the Barnes books of English Dance tunes. There are three of them, and that gives you the basic tune for almost every dance we have.
- Playford's Dancing Master: https://playforddances.com/
- The five Cecil Sharp dance instruction books that are out of copyright: https://round.soc.srcf.net/dances/cdb
- The most comprehensive dance video archive: https://lambertvillecountrydancers.org/videolist.php
- Bob Green has been working on a video archive of dances: http://dancevideos.childgrove.org/ecd
- Definitions of more figures than we are likely to ever use: https://round.soc.srcf.net/dances/elements or
https://cdss.org/wp-content/uploads/resources/Village-Green-English-Dancers-dance-manual-3rd-Edition.pdf - Youtube video demonstrations of the main figures we'll use: https://www.youtube.com/user/FainMusicUK/videos
Notes on the UK group's video demonstrations: The Right Hands Across is also called a Star Right. What they call reels, we call heys. Don't bother looking at their demonstrations for some move they call "crossover" or "double cast", because those are combos and we'll address the segments of those moves individually. - N found there's a Stately Steps ECD Instructional DVD. If anyone buys it, let me know if it's useful...
If you are teaching yourself to call or are starting your own dance group, there are two resources I strongly recommend: Simple Pleasures and 21 Easy English Country Dances. Simple Pleasures requires separate purchases for book and CD ($15 each), but the 21 Easy ECD book comes with a cd ($20 total). Simple Pleasures is the 3rd book & CD in the Bare Necessities collection. You can find most, if not all, on the CDSS website: http://store.cdss.org/
Where do we dance?
If you are travelling, there's this nifty map that lets you locate nearby dances: http://map.cdss.org/
If it's not on that list, it might be on this one: http://www-ssrl.slac.stanford.edu/~winston/ecd/hotbeds.htmlx
Costume thoughts:
For Women
Analysis on various female regency patterns: http://www.songsmyth.com/patternsgowns.html
Fudging the time period: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5KKViqeaD9c
For Men:
Analysis on various men's regency patterns: http://www.songsmyth.com/menspatterns.html
Fudging the time period: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VLTQtgsM1CI
More: I mention costume thoughts here and here
For musicians, I recommend purchasing the Barnes books of English Dance tunes. There are three of them, and that gives you the basic tune for almost every dance we have.