New Hampshire Old-Time Country Dance Web Site

Dancing in New Hampshire & New England

Moving Beyond the Seacoast Area of New Hampshire

This section of the website looks at stories and other articles related to dancing throughout New Hampshire and Maine, as well as the rest of New England and one or two from upstate New York.

In This Section & On This Page

On This Page: This page is a brief introduction to this section.
The Bradford, NH Square Dance & The Reunion Dance, October 20, 2007. The Bradford dance was a large dance, getting 400 dancers every weekend for years. This is about the dance and a reunion dance in 2007.
Dick Richardson's Fiddle & Other Stories, Fall 2006. Stories about dancing/playing for dances in New Hampshire, including playing with the Orzechowskis, playing on Star Island, and how I got to play Dick Richardson's fiddle.
Dancing in Maine: The Revival, Bowdoinham & Origins of Stylistic Features. Old Grey Goose, the Maine Country Dance Orchestra, the influence of Otto Soper and Dudley Laufman, and even a section on Lady of the Lake.

Introduction

I have lived in the Seacoast region of New Hampshire throughout the time I’ve been dancing. I’m not a big traveller, but I’ve danced in many places in New Hampshire and Maine, and in the remaining New England states and in upstate New York. Over the years I’ve written articles and stories about dancing in many of those places, and I’d like to present some of them in this section.

Many of the stories and articles here are originally from the Seacoast Country Dance Newsletter.

About the NH Country Dance Website

There are two major sections to this website: the Music and the Dance sections. This is the Dance section. Both are described below.

The Website. The New Hampshire Country Dance website is divided into the Music and Dance sections. The Dance section presents stories, history, philosophical and analytical articles. Topics include how dances and dancing evolve, and the repertoire and calling patterns of several callers The Music section presents a few hundred tunes in abc and PDF format as well as discussion of topics like learning by ear vs. from written music.

Edited & Published by Peter Yarensky. I am a dancer, caller and dance musician from the Seacoast region of New Hampshire. I play fiddle, piano and hammered dulcimer as well as several instruments that I play not very well. I call contras and squares with the Lamprey River Band and am available to call with others. I particularly enjoy calling for beginners due to the wonderful enthusiasm they exhibit.

Contact Information

Please feel free to contact me if you have questions related to any website material, if you find any errors, typos, omissions, or if you want to know about music and/or dance in the Seacoast region of New Hampshire.

Peter Yarensky
email:	peter dot yarensky at unh dot edu or
	peterynh at icloud dot com
	➛ usual substitutions apply
web:	nhcountrydance.com or
	fiddle.nhcountrydance.com or
	dance.nhcountrydance.com

Sources

Website Photos

All photos were taken by Peter Yarensky (website editor and writer of most of the contents) unless otherwise noted. All photos are used with permission.

There are a number of items, used by permission, from the Milne Special Collections and Archives, University of New Hampshire Library, Durham, NH, USA. These include:

Photos taken by Patrick Stevens. These are now part of the Patrick Stevens Collection, 1992-2018, MC 331.
Dance program booklet, West Swanzey NH, Dec. 23, 1898. Brownlow and Dorothea Thompson Collection, 1802-1994, MC 294.

Patrick was very supportive of my website efforts, and gave me a substantial collection of his dance photos explicitly to use on the website. After he died, Penny very generously donated his entire collection of dance photos and recordings to the New Hampshire Library of Traditional Music & Dance at University of New Hampshire.

Other Graphics

All sources of graphics allow usage on a noncommercial website.

Sources not mentioned here are acknowledged fully where used.

Aridi Computer Graphics Vector Clip Art Collection, Vol. 1–5. Aridi Computer Graphics, Inc., Dallas, TX, 1992–1994. Available for download as part of a larger collection at the Internet Archive.

Jury, David. The little book of typographic ornament, London, Laurence King Publishing Ltd., 2015. Downloadable as a set of 720 TIFF files.

Underground Grammarian, Printers' Devices & Clip Art collection. Early 1990s; no more information available, although there's a lot on the Internet about the Underground Grammarian.

Visual Delights collection of graphics, SunShine, Austin TX, 1991. Although that was too early to mention the web, the description of allowed usage says the graphics "may be incorporated in any products you sell or give away, provided you aren't primarily selling or giving away the images themselves." This usage would seem well within that definition.