Dear Brooklyn Contra Community,
We hope that you and your loved ones are safe and well this holiday season. As this unprecedented year comes to a close, we look back on our first decade of love and community which made Brooklyn Contra what it is, reflect on a year that uprooted us, and look ahead to the work we will do together - sowing new seeds and reaping new harvests.
Looking back on the time since our founding in 2010, we’ve been thrilled to co-create a community dedicated to sharing the joy of connection through contra dance with as many people as possible, now and into the future, and always mindful of the words of Pete Seeger: “When you bring people together for any purpose whatsoever, you’re in politics.“
For us, that has meant creating “participatory folk culture” as an alternative to the profit-driven culture fabrication of modern capitalism and the more stuffy versions of culture that separate audiences from performers. Throughout these past ten years, we tried our darnedest to spread the idea that there is magic in the flow of dancers and musicians and that culture is best made by all those who enjoy it. This has manifested as a welcoming, purposeful aesthetic, a call back to our folksy roots while speaking to modern sensibilities, our collaborations within and outside of the folk dance scene, the progressive political role we play, both explicitly and implicitly, at a time when building community is so essential, and in a host of other ways.
That’s not to say we haven’t faced challenges over the past ten years. Financial, organizational, and individual struggles, and the constant quest for affordable space in NYC have prevented us from doing all we would like. Specifically, we’ve never had the capacity to do all the organizing work we hope to do in our community and across participatory folk culture traditions.
After ten strong years of growth, 2020 forced us to clear the dance floor and threatened to break apart our community. But in the end, 2020 has shown us that we’ve created a durable team and a tight-knit community. With help from many of you, we took action to support artists in our community by dedicating a portion of our income from membership dues towards local musicians and arts organizations. For the first time ever, we hosted semi-weekly Prospect Park jam sessions to bring us together and commissioned new songs to support artists in need. Furthermore, recent events, and the discussions they have demanded concerning racial inequality in America, have made it more necessary than ever for Brooklyn Contra to face the question: How can we do our part as a social organization to address racism within the folk community, make our events safer and more inclusive, and build a more equitable society?
The Brooklyn Contra Organizing Committee has redoubled its commitment to create a more inclusive dance experience. We are working to acknowledge the historically-ignored roots of contra dance, including its direct connections to African-American folk traditions. We are adding a new section to our website dedicated to the history of contra as part of our mission to raise up the Black artists and innovators who helped build the social dance into what it is today. We also plan to improve our new dancer curriculum to be more welcoming to first-time dancers and expand the reach of our community in the process. Finally, we are committing to working more with other NYC organizations to create space for participatory folk cultures from all traditions.
Like all of you, we look forward to a far different 2021. Whatever the next year brings, we know that we still need the magic of dance to connect us, probably more than ever, and that our society still faces the many challenges that 2020 helped to highlight.
With your help, we’re excited to re-launch Brooklyn Contra live and in person in 2021. The world needs more joy and more ways for people to connect across generations, classes, urban/rural boundaries, races, and other categories that divide us. We know that contra, and all folk traditions, allow us to experience and recognize our shared humanity in a way that is more critical now than ever, and we can’t wait to do it with you.
With Love,
The Brooklyn Contra Team
Preston, Carl, Katie, Joe, Andrea, and Emma