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The Berea College Country Dancers have been performing traditional Appalachian dances, along with a vast repertoire of international folk dances for over 70 years. This performing group represents a much larger recreational folk dancing movement currently alive and well in the U.S. known to most people as "contra dancing."
To learn more about Appalachian and greater American dance history and practice, visit the Country Dance and Song Society's home page.
National Standard #9: Understanding Music in Relation to History and Culture
Objectives
- Students identify roles of musicians in Appalachian culture.
- Students identify specific events in aural examples of meter, rhythm and tonality.
- Students experience musical elements impact on one's feelingful response.
Where do the Dances Come From?
Along with folk songs and singing games, many dances well known to Appalachian people were learned when itinerant recreation teachers traveled the hilly roads throughout Southern Appalachia, teaching dances and singing games at settlement schools.
The settlement schools were often the only formal education available for miles around in the early 20th century.
That repertoire of songs, dances and games closely resembles that of the famous folk song collector Cecil Sharp, who collected at the schools and throughout Southern Appalchia in the early 1900's.