The Cincinnati English Country Dancers will be on hiatus until the threat from the COVID-19 is reduced. Mike Self and the Board will be making the decision about when to restart activities.
Special Bonus English Dance with CDSS Board and Potluck
Friday February 7 — 5:30 PM – 10:00 PM
Country Dance and Song Society (CDSS) is the umbrella group under which Cincinnati English Country Dancers and Cincinnati Contra Dance is organized. The CDSS Traveling Exec will have their semi-annual meeting in Cincinnati the weekend of Feb 7 – 9. Cincinnati was one of the five founding cities that created CDSS in 1915.
In addition to the weekly Thursday dance, we will have a special dance on Friday. Dances will be called by CDSS Board Members with music by The Ed Strelau Band. Church of Ascension & Holy Trinity at 334 Burns Avenue, Wyoming, OH 45215. Members $5, Non-Members $10 Questions? Contact Mike Self.
Doors open: 5:30
Potluck begins: 6:00 (Coordinated by Jim and Linda Coppock)
Dancing: 7:30 – 10:00
There’s actually five days fun to be had:
- Thursday Feb 6, 8p-10p, Weekly English Dance at Church of Ascension & Holy Trinity
- Saturday Feb 8, 8 – 11:30 pm Contra Dance, called by Kathy Anderson, music by SuperTrad + Brian Lindsay. Come dance with lots of friendly, happy people! Wyoming Fine Arts Center, 322 Wyoming Ave, Wyoming, OH 45215
- Sunday Feb 9, Noonish Community Meeting with CDSS, Wyoming Fine Arts Center. Share your questions and concerns with the national leadership!
- Sunday Feb 9, 4:30 pm Shape-Note Singing (aka Sacred Harp singing) and potluck supper at Community Friends Meeting, 3960 Winding Way, Cincinnati 45229 North Avondale. $2 donation requested. Plenty of Sacred Harp books will be available. Singing in a different key, very accessible to those who may not read music.
- OR Sunday Feb 9, Queen City Balladeers at Zion United Church of Christ, 2301 Indian Mound Ave, Norwood OH 45212. (No serious food generally provided here.)
Foxfire plays at our Thursday Night Dance
Special Thursday evening of English Country dancing with the amazing, energetic and creative Foxfire. This is the evening before our weekend dance (which is closed out). All dances will be taught by local callers. You can expect them to take your dancing energy and return it with joy and beauty.
Go here for a taste of their musical talent. Impropriety is a favorite dance and tune on their album The Introduction.
Date: October 31, 2019 (that’s right, Halloween night)
Time: 8:00 – 10:30 PM Please note our dance will extend an additional 30 minutes for this special event.
Where: Church of Ascension & Holy Trinity, 334 Burns Avenue, Wyoming, OH 45215
Price: $8.00 CECD Members, $10 Non-Members. Please consider joining CECD to receive discounts for all of our special events.
Formal dress not required, costumes admired but not required. This location is a popular trick or treat neighborhood. Parking may be tricky between 6-8. Questions? Contact Mike Self.
CECD website gets a new look
If you’ve been here before, you may have noticed we’ve moved our “digital furniture” around a bit. In fact, we’ve completely rebuilt the CECD site from the ground up.
Why the change? Because nowadays folks are communicating in a lot of new ways on new devices, some of which didn’t exist when we built our original website.
What’s changed?
The key thing that’s different “under the hood” is our website now runs on WordPress, a free, open-source content management system. In plain English, that means some spiffy software now handles a lot of the technical stuff for us, while allowing ordinary humans to add and update information a lot more easily.
The visual design we’re using is pretty basic for two reasons. First, it makes the site readable on most devices. Second, I don’t know a lot about WordPress design. So I’ve essentially adapted one of the most common themes (aka “do-it-yourself website kits”) I could get without spending any of the group’s money. If you’d like to see fancier typefaces and other frills on the site, I note the webmaster position is currently vacant.
Why did we bother changing the website?
While the revised site isn’t likely to win any major design awards, there are two important things it does give us:
- More efficient communication with our community. The new site makes it much easier for our board and volunteers to get the word out online. Notably, it’s now possible for people who don’t know how to write HTML code to change the website. For example, committees that organize special dances will now be able to post and edit event information directly, without having to wait on the webmaster or another busy volunteer to put it online. (Did I mention we don’t currently have a webmaster?) They also won’t have to worry about breaking something that makes the website run. In addition, time-sensitive information such as weather cancellations can now be posted much faster. This will benefit not only our members, but newcomers and visitors too.
- Easier use on mobile devices. In addition to “old-fashioned” desktop computers, our site is now optimized to work on fancy phones, tablets, and other mobile devices, which make up a growing majority of internet use. It’s now simpler for you to check the latest updates easily from just about any mobile gizmo that has a web browser. With luck, this will also make it easier for new folks to find out about the group, and perhaps even use their spiffy GPS-enabled devices to find their way to a fun-filled evening of dancing.
And yes, there’s link to the Facebook page for the social media junkies. You know who you are. 😉
Many thanks to Dwight Blubaugh for creating and maintaining our original website, and for helping to launch the conversion to WordPress.