My preacher says that when someone starts a sentence with "in my humble opinion", he/she really means "from my deluded, uninformed and biased perspective". I know that he meant that kindly, and I will use it here as a means of explaining that I probably have most of what I am about to say, wrong or incomplete.

So, in my humble opinion, what separates English Country Dancing from Contra Dancing, in one word is: elegance.  I have heard Contra classified as "physical" and ECD as "cerebral".  I have heard others say that Contra mostly requires energy and is repetitious, but ECD requires thinking and attention to specific styling.  Still others have said, "same dance music, different dance".

Twenty-five years ago my then fiancé, Loretta, and I took "basic square dancing" in order to qualify and be accepted as dancers.  Hungry for more and seeing what fun other dancers had, we took "plus".  We then saw other dancers doing something called "A" (Advanced).  They were no longer smiling.  Their faces were marked with fierce concentration and it definitely wasn't fun any more.  We stopped at plus.  I picked up a lot of styling variations that were interesting and fun, judging from my fellow dancers laughing and having a grand time dancing with me.  A lot of this migrates directly into Contra dancing, where there is liberal opportunity for personal styling options and many square dance figures are called routinely.  I must admit though, from the far side of age 60, I don't have the energy that I used to have.  (Not to mention there is much more of me to maneuver around!)

So, the first thing I noticed with ECD is that it is about 25% slower than Contra.  I find that I want to dance almost every dance at a three-day ECD event.  With contra, I dance one or two, and sit out one to catch my breath and replentish liquids (or maybe change into a dry shirt).  The next thing I noticed with ECD is that there is plenty of styling, but almost no individual styling.  Take formations for example.  Nearly all Contra dances are called from improper lines (boy-girl-boy-girl) unless they are in a ring, which is used for mixers.  I think that this is done mostly for the accomodation of new dancers.  In ECD you have proper and improper lines, Becket, groups of six, eight, even nine (six women, three men, in three lines of three).  ECD is rarely repetitious.  There is almost always a distinct style taught for each dance, and there opportunity to really communicate and move with your dance partner.  If you followed the example from square dance, you might conclude that ECD is like A ... but that's not it at all.  ECD is great fun and very interesting, it just requires that you get your head into that historical mode and dance like a gentleman or an elegant lady.

I'm including two videos below, both from the 2009 Set for Spring Event in Dallas.  The first shows some of that slower, more elegant style of dancing.  The second is illustatrive of the emotional level of the music.  There is an expression in Traditional Dance, "Wait for it ..." and meaning that you are poised to execute that dance move on a particular beat of the music.  ECD brings out the best of this, and when it works you have an entire room of people moving with one mind, one heart, one soul.

Dim lights Embed Embed this video on your site

Dim lights Embed Embed this video on your site