The Dance Gypsy strives to provide the information needed by dancers throughout the United States and Canada -- even world wide. We now field about 1500 separate requests for information every day!
Because the Dance Gypsy started in Vermont, many people think of it as primarily a contra dance listing or a Vermont guide. In reality, we attempt to provide a complete directory to dance related information. We have two major listings, plus a few smaller ones:
- The Event Finder lists both regularly scheduled (e.g., weekly/monthly) dances, plus festivals and “special” events (less frequent than “monthly”) — including contra, Scottish, English, international, Balkan, Israeli, squares, ballroom, swing, tango and other traditional dance forms. Although our historical roots as New England–based listing service is evident from the number of events in that region, we now list events from all over the the entire 50 states plus Canada, as well as foreign events when we have them. At any given time there are over 2000 dance events listed some as much as one year in advance.
- The Performer Finder is a guide to dance bands, musicians, callers, and instructors nation–wide — including gig lists. Like the event finder, it lists performers for all traditional dance forms. The Performer Finder is now our most requested resource.
Other pages include:
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Dance resources: guides to vendors, dance organizations, other dance indices, and even foreign dance sites.
- Services for dance organizations such as: advertising, websites and Email forwarding.
- There are shortcut pages for dancers who must for whatever reason avoid javascript.
Philosophy
The Dance Gypsy lists all appropriate events without charge to either reader or dance venue. Some dance-index websites charge dance organizations a fee for inclusion in their listings. However, our belief is that the most valuable resource to the reader is one which lists all dances — not just those with a sponsoring organization rich enough to afford a fee. Any fee-based listing service is necessarily incomplete — and we aim to be complete! This service will continue without charge as long as possible.
Alas, this does mean that we need to seek funding through other means. Presently this means we accept ads, offer services to dance organizations and offer advanced services to encourage supporters. We no longer run formal fund drives.
You, too, can help support the Dance Gypsy through your donations. The Dance Gypsy does accept advertising in its web pages, but only for dance-related events and products. And we provide related dance–services such as web pages and email forwarding.
To make sure your dance is listed in the Dance Gypsy, send us the relevant information
The Dance Gypsy Festival Planner
The annual Dance Gypsy Summer Planner, started in 1994 and evolved into the Dance Gypsy Festival Planner — a comprehensive listing of dance-related festivals, dance weeks and weekends throughout the USA. In 2005, the Dance Finder and Festival Finder were merged into a simpler unified listing, the Event Finder, which is now available only on line and is maintained on an ongoing basis listing events for one year into the future. As with the regular dance listings, there is no charge for listing an event in the Dance Gypsy Summer Planner, but we do accept ads to high-light your event.
The Dance Gypsy Web pages
The pages at this site are the only web pages provided by the Dance Gypsy organization. Actually there are three different domain names that are identical:
If this or any other page belonging to the Dance Gypsy appear as part of any site other than www.thedancegypsy.com, that constitutes a violation of U.S. Copyright law — and we would appreciate it if you would let us know (de('tdg', 'com', 'thedancegypsy'))
What about other “Dance Gypsy” web sites?
Actually there are at least four other sites claiming or using the name “Dance Gypsy”:
www.thedancegypsy.org www.dancegypsy.com are alternate names for the Dance Gypsy.
Kiran Wagle also uses the name “Dance Gypsy” on some of his pages. He has used the term since at least the year 2000, but his pages are pretty much self contained and should not cause too much confusion.
Mark Gaines runs a site containing dance info for dances in Chicago and Milwaukee at www.geocities.com/dancegypsy/
In general you can always tell web pages affiliated with the Dance Gypsy by their salmon color and by the words “ The Dance Gypsy” appearing near the upper left corner.
The use of the term “Gypsy”
The Dance Gypsy has no connections to the Roma peoples (often called “Gypsies” by outsiders) or to their dances and music. Rather we use the term as it appears in many modern dictionaries, referring generically to “one who wanders”. Such use is not intended to make any comment on the Roma peoples. Comment from interested readers is invited.
Copyright
Except where explicitly indicated to the contrary (e.g., the photograph by Sean Reid), all content on any page within the Dance Gypsy website are the sole property of Greg Scragg and the Dance Gypsy, are copyrighted, and registered with the United States Copyright Office and all right reserved. One important exception: use is hereby granted for any fair use, such as copying a single listing for promotion of your group or event, or printing a paper copy of a week for your personal use. Permission is explicitly denied for any extended copies such as a list of all dances of a particular type within a particular geographic area. Permission is also explicitly denied for inclusion of any Dance Gypsy page (or copy thereof) within other websites. If you would like permission for a specific use, please write us and it will probably be granted.
The Photographs on the Dance Gypsy home page
Sean Reid generously provided the photograph used for the Dance Gypsy home pages. He holds the copyrights on all his photographs It is published here with his permission — but no permission has been extended for further reproduction. The picture is from the Walpole, NH dance (3rd Saturdays). Sean is currently working on a major photo-documentation project featuring many of the dances in central New England. In the future, I may feature additional photographs on these pages. In the mean time, you can see samples of his work at: http://www.motorcycletours.com/northeastern/dance.htm
A short History
Until March 2000, the Dance Gypsy was primarily a paper-based newsletter describing folk and traditional dance events in New England. The Dance Gypsy Summer Planner was an annual publication listing festivals across the country. Those two publications plus more are now combined into these web pages. For a longer history of this evolution, see a short history of the Dance Gypsy.
Other activities
The Dance Gypsy is primarily the result of efforts by Greg Scragg, a former university professor, who now focusses his attention on various activities, based on interest or community need. Although the Gypsy does seek donations, work has been essentially voluntary (over 12 years, the cash flow has not quite broken even). Progressively more of these are based in Vietnam where he stays for extended periods each winter. Some of these include:
English classes. Teaching English at “Crazy Kim’s”. This is really a bar and cafe, but Kim is dedicated to he;ping the children of Vietnam. This help includes providing a school for English, staffed by foreign volunteers.
Volunteer web site design. Entrepreneurship is a relatively new concept in Vietnam. Young people venturing into this often need help in promoting themselves. I have helped a few of them create a web presence, nothing fancy —but way ahead of their competition:
- Jennies Apartments. Jennie and her mother have run a bar catering to expats. They are currently expanding the bar to include a complete apartment building, again catering to expats.
- Nha Trang Apartments. (in spite of the similar name, these 2 businesses are entirely unrelated). NTA is an apartment finding service
For more on these efforts, see Greg Scragg Computing, or Greg Scragg for his genmeral website (as soon as he finishes rebuilding it)