THE PARK AVENUE CONTRA
COMMUNITY
Intentions & Rationale
New Hall! + Post-pandemic urge to DANCE again
June 2022! We were very lucky to find the Park Avenue Community Center shortly after it opened — a large hall with a splendid wood floor, A/C, new sound system, and community center support! It was also a perfect location for expanding contra dancing to encircle West Philly, DelCo, Chester County, and northern Delaware (Thanks Arden, you were here first!).
At the same time, a lot of 20-and 30- something dancers scattered around the region were eager to escape the no-touch pandemic shutdown and get out to dance and hang out with their cohort. They also asked us about calling and about playing in bands. We wanted to put wind in their sails!
Where does this new dance fit in Philly's eco-system?
There's no one best way to run a dance, and we decided to experiment a bit with these goals:
- Fun, reliable-quality dancing, calling, and music
- Nurturing our dance community
- Mentoring and expanding our regional pool of dancers/musicians/callers
- Complementing Mt. Airy and other Philly area dances, rather than duplicating them or trying to compete.
It seemed that around the country, the dances with lots of regular attenders involved in organizing, calling, and playing were more lively and resilient. People developed friendships and know-how and allegiance within their own region and could entertain themselves. The Mt. Airy Thursdays, and the Germantown Country Dancer Wednesdays are successful examples of this.
We consulted with BIDA about what they had learned from running their incubator dance in the Boston area.
We also had some nostalgia for New England town dances where anyone who wanted to play brought their instruments (sitting in the back until they got good enough to be up front), where musicians played tunes by ear, and where the callers knew most of the folks on the dance floor.
Our current structure
All of this came together in our initial model of senior plus junior callers sharing evenings, the By-Ear Open Band, the consistent presence of Box & String showcasing various musician guests, and cultivating informal opportunities to hang out before and after the dance...
