We’re delighted to announce the draft workshop schedule for the weekend. We pulled it together after talking with our wonderful callers, Gaye Fifer and Terry Doyle. They have a really good idea of what dancers love to do and how to challenge them (just enough)!

You’ll find some dance weekend staples here. I mean, who can NOT do another waltz workshop with Gaye and Wayne? It’s like Miss Piggy asking, “Is it possible for a person to have too many pairs of lavender gloves?” You know the answer to that one.

We’re mixing it up with Gaye’s Wake-up contras and squares on Saturday morning, then slowing it down after lunch with English Country. New to the weekend is Terry’s Flatfooting workshop.  I saw her teach this at Rover Rendezvous last year, and it’s really, really fun.

Given the challenges dance communities have faced in what we hope is the post-COVID era, Gaye will lead a discussion on dance organizing after dinner on Saturday.

We are looking for a volunteer to lead an informal morning sing on Sunday.

And then we just keep contra dancing—Friday night, Saturday morning, afternoon and evening, and Sunday morning. I tried to come up with a set of adjectives to distinguish them—are they fast, flowing, frantic or what? Well, there’s one session we’ve labelled as challenging, but you can leave it to Gaye and Terry and our two wonderful bands—Playing With Fyre and Trillium—to come up with the right mix for the rest of the weekend.

David Mould,
Chair, FOOTMAD dance committee