New Hampshire Old-Time Country Dance Web Site

The Lamprey River Band

The Lamprey River Band & The First Thursday Durham Dance

The Lamprey River Band has been playing for Seacoast NH dances since 1983. We play a monthly dance at the Unitarian Fellowship in Durham. We keep alive the New England tradition of the large country dance orchestra with a solid beat, strong melody and clear phrasing. This section has an up-to-date Durham dance schedule and lots of information about the band and its history.

•••> The Durham dance is On Hold for the indefinite future. Given the premature relaxing of precautions without reasonable testing or monitoring programs in place it seems unlikely conditions will be favorable for dancing for some time. We will make it widely known when we are able to resume safely!

Dates will continue to be listed below but sadly there will be no dance until further notice.

Page & Section Contents

On This Page: (1) Listing for First Thursday Durham Dance with dates, and (2) About the Lamprey River Band.
The Lamprey River Band Story I and The Lamprey River Band Story II. A fairly detailed history of the band with stories, pictures, and some comments on how the band got started, band membership, the Thursday night dance in Madbury, Dover & Durham, its influence on local dancing and more. If you have any interest in the band I recommend that you look at these pages.

The Lamprey River Band First Thursday Dance in Durham, NH — On Hold
First Thursdays, Durham, NH, Durham Unitarian Universalist Fellowship. Lamprey River Band, Peter Yarensky & Sarah Mason calling; guest musicians & callers invited. 8:00 – 10:00, 20 Madbury Road, Durham, NH 03824.
	◆	Upcoming Dance Dates: January 2 (2025) (CANCELLED), February 6, March 6, April 3, May 1, June 5, July 3, & August 7.
	◆	Contact: Peter, peter dot yarensky at unh dot edu, https://dance.nhcountrydance.com/lamprey-river-band/.
	◆	Map: Click here to download a map to the dance.
	◆	Guest Calling: As this is a short dance we generally have no more than two guest callers. Talk to Sarah Mason or Peter Yarensky as early in the dance as you can to get a slot. Please do not try to reserve in advance. (Exceptions may be made in unusual circumstances, e.g. someone travelling a long distance).

About the Lamprey River Band

The Lamprey River Band is a traditional New England country dance (contradance) band. I should say right away that I am writing as the founder of the band and a member for over 35 years as I write (winter 2020). The band comes out of the tradition of the larger country dance orchestra; we are modeled loosely after the Canterbury Country Dance Orchestra and the Maine Country Dance Orchestra.

We play for public dances and private dance parties to promote enjoyment and community on the part of the dancers. We started in 1983 and continue to exist for the enjoyment it brings us as musicians, and for the enjoyment we bring to our dancers. Our playing is characterized by a strong beat, clear melody and clear melodic phrases, all characteristics desirable in any band playing for New England dancing.

A quick mention of why the Lamprey River Band pages are so near the beginning of the Dance website. First, we are the oldest band that plays regularly in the Seacoast area of New Hampshire, and during much of that time our dances were the largest in the area. Therefore the band ends up being involved in many aspects of dancing in this part of the state. Second, this is the band's only website, and making it prominent helps with publicizing our dances.

About the NH Country Dance Website, Dance Portion

There are two major sections to this website: the Music and the Dance sections. Obviously this is the Dance section. It presents stories, history, some philosophical articles and some discussion of typical sequences of dances called by various callers.

The Website. The New Hampshire Country Dance website is divided into the Music and Dance sections. Obviously this is the Dance section. It presents stories, history, some philosophical articles and some discussion of typical sequences of dances called by various 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

Graphics come from a few sources. All sources allow usage on a noncommercial website. Here are the main sources; others 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.

Page & Section Contents

The Lamprey River Band First Thursday Dance in Durham, NH — On Hold

About the Lamprey River Band