Help: Country Dance - contra-danse?

Subject: Country Dance - contra-danse?
From: Penny S.
Date: 28 Aug 99 - 05:15 PM

The commentary to the televised Edinburgh Tattoo stated that the term "country dance" was a corruption of the French "contra-danse" meaning a dance in which partners faced each other. Does anyone have more information on this?

Penny

Subject: RE: Help: Country Dance - contra-danse?
From: laurj
Date: 28 Aug 99 - 07:26 PM

I don't know whether "country dance" came from the french term, however i do know that in the states, there's a type of dancing called contra dance, which is called that because two lines of partners face each other and one ends up facing someone of the opposite sex. (quite riske, by some old standards). The best known contra dance is the Virginia Reel, if you know of it. Traditionally (i.e., non-"contra") would be a line of men facing a line of women.

I had always heard that country was as opposed to dances of the titled & nobility. Those were more recently french than the older country dances.

Subject: RE: Help: Country Dance - contra-danse?
From: AllisonA(Animaterra)
Date: 28 Aug 99 - 08:18 PM

And here in New England, the Virginia Reel is not a contra dance, but a reel! A real contra dance has the couples in line like a reel, but all the way down the line the couples are numbered odds and evens, or actives and inactives. The actives progress down the set, the inactives progress up the set, changing directions when they get to either end of the line. When it works, it's great fun!
Allison

Subject: RE: Help: Country Dance - contra-danse?
From: Bert
Date: 30 Aug 99 - 01:27 PM

Penny, I was told the same thing when I first started dancing. I don't know how true it is though.

Bert.

Subject: RE: Help: Country Dance - contra-danse?
From: dick greenhaus
Date: 30 Aug 99 - 03:33 PM

To the best of my knowledge, Contra Dance (an Anglicization of the French) was pronounced Contry Dance by its rural practitioners. Academic types, such as thge founders of the English Country Dance Society, thought that Contry was a corruption of "Country" and fixed it.

Back a century or so ago, there were square dances (quadrilles), line dances (which included Contras) and Circle Dances. The terms referred to the starting formation of the dance.

Subject: RE: Help: Country Dance - contra-danse?
From: Malcolm Douglas
Date: 30 Aug 99 - 08:32 PM

I believe that it's generally thought -in the UK at any rate- that the French "contredanse" is a gallicisation of the English "country dance". In France, it usually means a Quadrille. "Contra Dance" would then be a re-anglicisation. Mind you, I may have paid too much attention to the EFDSS, which can be a risky business!

Malcolm

Subject: RE: Help: Country Dance - contra-danse?
From: Penny S
Date: 31 Aug 99 - 03:38 PM

Thanks - I know know that it is an area of confusion, if nothing else. Penny

Subject: RE: Help: Country Dance - contra-danse?
From: Doug Olsen
Date: 31 Aug 99 - 03:50 PM

My understanding -- and I'm pretty sure it's independent of EFDSS -- is much in line with what Malcolm wrote. The important point is that English Country Dancing, as published by Playford and others, was tremendously popular among the 17th-Century English upper-middle and upper classes. It spread to France and was renamed as Malcolm wrote. It came to New England from France, not from England, hence the name used in New England. The thought that "contra" derives from a Romance root meaning "across from" (e.g. Contra Costa county, across the Bay from San Francisco) is plausible but untrue.

That's my understanding, anyway.

Subject: RE: Help: Country Dance - contra-danse?
From: Penny S
Date: 31 Aug 99 - 03:52 PM

That does seem more likely.

Penny

Subject: RE: Help: Country Dance - contra-danse?
From: Bert
Date: 31 Aug 99 - 03:57 PM

Malcom,

Ah! it's always great to poke fun at the EFDSS. They used to be really pompous at one time and they got lots of things wrong. I don't know if they've improved in recent years.

We have to admit though, that there's two sides to that coin. During the bleak years early in the century, they were practically the only ones carrying the torch. Also, they do make Cecil Sharpe House available to lesser mortals.

So we have to give them a lot of credit for the material and interest that they have preserved for us.

And if they are REAL folkies they won't mind good natured kidding.

Bert.

Subject: RE: Help: Country Dance - contra-danse?
From: Charles
Date: 31 Aug 99 - 04:35 PM

On my side of the channel (I'm French) we hear the same story, that contredanse is the French for coutry dance. By the way in today's French at least, contre doesn't mean opposite, it means besides (opposite: en face). But meanings change. Maybe it was different 300 years ago.

Subject: RE: Help: Country Dance - contra-danse?
From: Jo Taylor
Date: 31 Aug 99 - 07:05 PM

I'm in France but not French, I understand contre to mean 'against, in opposition to'... contredanse = long sets, quadrille = square sets, 'a la ronde' = circle dances, etc... the French dancers for whom I've called seem to have understood these terms, perhaps there are regional variations, after all, 300 years ago there was no such thing as 'the French language'! :-)
Jo

Subject: RE: Help: Country Dance - contra-danse?
From: Malcolm Douglas
Date: 31 Aug 99 - 10:07 PM

Bert:

I've been a member of the EFDSS for 25 years, now, which is why I feel ok about mocking them once in a while, when I think they deserve it. Of course, you're quite right; the Society has done a lot of very valuable work. I just feel that a lot more might have been achieved in the last couple of decades if they had paid more attention to those of us who have an interest in music and song as well as just social dance. That's another subject, though, for another place; and it looks as if things are finally changing for the better.

With best wishes

Malcolm Douglas

Subject: RE: Help: Country Dance - contra-danse?
From: catspaw49
Date: 31 Aug 99 - 11:28 PM

This is the damndest place .... We talk about everything and can define nothing. So maybe we need to throw it all together and have Reel Folk, Contra Traditional, and Morris the songwriter. Jesus, gimmee peace.........

Simply amazing.

Spaw

Subject: RE: Help: Country Dance - contra-danse?
From:
Date: 01 Sep 99 - 02:38 AM

Hi,

Interesting debates to which sadly I feel we will never get an answer but what hours of debate and teasing we have fuelled with this one - the contra arguments will be fun.

As for the diversion to C# well they do a fair job now, at last, I left 25 years ago.

ho hum

I hope this mail doesn't duple up improper or run contra to any of the others.

A. XX

Subject: RE: Help: Country Dance - contra-danse?
From: Joe Offer
Date: 01 Sep 99 - 04:15 AM

When the Sacramento Contra Dance started a dozen years ago, the city parks department wouldn't allow it to be called "contra" dancing - they thought people might think it was too political, that it had something to do with Nicaragua or something like that. Now that the city no longer sponsors it, it's called "contra" again.
-Joe Offer-