New Hampshire Magazine September 2017

self. Like in a Jane Austen story, you could
certainly see the potential for matchmaking. And
indeed, contras have served as a kind of
singles market for finding a mate throughout
history. “Today if you went to any dance and
asked how many people met their spouse at a
dance, you’d find at least one couple at every
dance,” says Millstone. “Typical contra dances
are now smoke-, drug- and alcohol-free, so it’s
a sort of crunchy granola alternative for people
who don’t want to hang out in the bar or club
scene necessarily. And the number of people
who have met their spouse at a dance is legion.”
And that’s not necessarily just for heterosexual
couples, either. There’s a whole movement
now to gender-free dancing, according to
Millstone, where traditional roles are blurred.
In cities like San Francisco and Boston, fans
organize dances for the LGBT community.
“Every 30 seconds you’re holding someone
else in your arms, swinging, interacting, and it’s
safe,” says Millstone. “It’s an opportunity to be
physically connected to someone, you’re smiling
a lot, making eye contact with people, and
every so often along the way you might meet
someone interesting. And that might turn into
a spark that turns into something more.”
But while it’s true that contra dancing is a
cousin of Austen’s English country dancing
and has its roots in 18th-century England, the
people in this room more likely associate it
with 20th-century New Hampshire.
Contra in New England
Bob McQuillen, a prolific composer of contra
music from the 1940s on who received a
National Heritage Fellowship, once referred
to Nelson as the “contra dance capital of
the world.” That’s a catchphrase that several
Nelson dancers mentioned to me with pride.
But while Nelson may have a colorful contra
history dating back 200 years, it’s not necessarily
the birthplace of the form.
Above: Members of the Ralph Page Orchestra
play in Nelson in 1941. Below from left:
Samuel Foucher, Perrin Ellsworth-Heller,
Roger Treat and Lloyd Carr
What is clear is that contra is a descendant
or cousin of English country dancing, according
to Millstone. The first book that described
English country dances was John Playford’s
“The English Country Dancing Master,” published
in 1651.
“The first Playford’s had a lot of variations,
including four-couple, three-couple
and two-couple dances, and what they called
‘long ways for as many as will,’ meaning long
lines with men on one side and women on
the other,” Millstone says. “The long lines
dances were about a third of the repertoire in
the first Playford. By the early 1700s, 98 percent
of dances were ‘long ways for as many as will.’
Those became the dances that the colonists from
England brought to America.”
Like other art, dance is impossible to
separate from political events. By the time
of the American Revolution, what started as
English country dance had started to become
less English. When America was allied with
the French during the War of 1812, dance
began picking up French influences, which
would later evolve into quadrilles and squares.
In New England, new 19th-century mills
brought French Canadian workers and, with
them, their styles of dance.
“By the 1800s, something that we could call
distinctly contra begins to develop in New
Hampshire,” says Millstone. “Political candidates
in the late 1800s who wanted to garner
favor with voters would host dances. Towns
like Nelson and Francestown in the Monadnock
Region have a long dancing tradition
dating well back into [the] 1800s.”
52 nhmagazine.com | September 2017