Caller Resources

A list of dance resources by the  Germantown Country Dancers (Philadelphia, PA, USA).  Start here, this is very comprehensive.

A lot of information (dance terminology, where to find dances, and tips for callers) from  The Round, the University affiliated group in Cambridge, UK.  New callers may want to check out the notes on calling by Anthony Stone.

The CDSS has an online library of various resources.

The most reliable dance instructions will always be found in published books.  Ball booklets are useful, but can be misleading or incomplete.  Be aware that most historic dances are reconstructions, and there may be significant differences between versions.  Here are some online sites that contain dance instructions:

Alan Winston is a caller and choreographer in the California Bay Area who has an extensive online collection of his dance instructions, including English and Contra dances.

Playford’s Dancing Master: The Compleat Dance Guide is an online repository of all of the dances published from 1651 to 1728, including facsimile copies of the originals and sheet music.  It is not always clear what the source of the modern interpretation is.  If you are interested in facsimiles of all versions (without modern interpretations) for research you can look at the illustrated compendium of Playford dances.

THE ROUND is the group affiliated with the University of Cambridge in England.  They have instructions for their versions dances in their core repertoire.

There is a partial database of dances published in the Barnes Vol. 3 book of tunes.

Choreographers' online dance instructions:

• Colin Hume is an contemporary English caller and choreographer who also interprets historical dances.  Colin shares his online dance collection, including his own compositions.
• Pat Shaw was a prolific and innovative English choreographer, who also researched historical dances, and wrote the popular Levi Jackson Rag along with many more hits.
• Sharon Green is a contemporary caller and choreographer from California shares her choreographies online.
• The Dancehall Players published three volumes of Out of the Silence  CDs of dance music in the pandemic era, they are sharing dances written to these recordings on their website.

Choreographers without online instructions:

• Gary Roodman may be the best known American contemporary choreographer.  He has written 14 books of dances, a subset of which appears in 7 CDs and their companion instruction books.  
• Jenna Simpson is a Virginia caller and choreographer whose books and videos are available on her website.
• Brooke Friendly and Chris Sackett have written the Impropriety series of six books of new dances with companion CDs.
• Fried de Metz Herman was a well known choreographer who also interpreted historical dances.  Her six dance books, published 1980 to 2009, are listed on the Westchester website.

If a picture is worth a thousand words, then a video must be worth ten thousand words.  While videos are a very fast way to learn dances, they may contain the wrong figures or wrong phrasing and other errors.  Always cross reference with a published source whenever possible.

Lambertville catalogue of dance videos is an alphabetical and searchable list of dances.  In addition to linking videos on YouTube and elsewhere it also contains the essential dance information (formation, meter, and links to instructions if they are available online).

Up A Double contains computer animations and verbal descriptions of many dances, and is a good place to compare different reconstructions of a historic dance.

YouTube has many dances, enter the dance name and 'English Country Dance' in the search bar.

The Childgrove Dance Video archive has about 200 ECD videos.

Our club YouTube Channel @ECD Richmond  posts video playlists for our upcoming balls, plus for the balls in Williamsburg and DC.

Online dance lists containing everything but the instructions can be useful if you are researching a dance.

The CDSS now sponsors Anthony Heywood's database of over 20,000 dances.  For each dance it includes the formation (e.g. duple minor), a list of figures used (w/o instructions), published instruction sources, and a list of audio recordings of the music.

Scott Higgs and Jenny Beer have a listing of their core dances showing the formation type, musical meter and key,  and source of sheet music.

There are several sources for buying dance books and recordings.

The CDSS store should be your first stop, it has both books and recordings, and CDSS members enjoy a 10% discount.  

Bandcamp allows musicians to sell their recordings directly and lets them keep more of their earnings.  Some recordings can be steamed live, and you may have a choice of just paying for a download or getting a CD in the mail.  You can buy a single track instead of a whole album.  The English Country Dance collection by Bare Necessities has many dances from the core repertoire.

Apple Music offers streaming with a subscription, or sales of tracks and albums in the iTunes store (on PC, Mac, or phones).  

Spotify also has some English Country Dance music for streaming, you will need either a free subscription (with ads) or a paid subscription.

If you are a musician and need sheet music for English Dancing then the first step is to get the books by Barnes, as they contain the core repertoire.