The Dance Gypsy’s

Dance and Festival Finder

Welcome visitor

Welcome to the Dance Gypsy’s Dance and Festival Finder

[Note: to get rid of this (or any other) help window, click on the window or click again on the question mark.]

Use this tool to find any of over 500 folk, contra and traditional dance events each month. Search for dances according to your own individual needs — by any combination of date, location, distance from home, dance style or series name. If you wish, the form will even keep track of your dance choices for next time you visit.

The simplest search: You must specify at least two criteria: regular dance/special events and one of the 4 other categorizations (if you specify no options at all) the search would find thousands of events. Fortunately, simple selections would find all dances within the next week (typically 1-200 events).

Time Constraints: Select the time frame you are interested in. If not selected, events will be found for the next year. If selected, the default is the next week, but you may select any date range you like (even in past).

Quicksearch will open a calendar from which you can select a single day’s events: select the “Quicksearch” button and then the day you want.

Distance Constraints: Select a location. All events within the specified distance of the location can be found. If not selected, events will be found anywhere in the world.

Style Constraints: Select the dance style or styles you are interested in. All events featuring those styles (and only those styles) will be selected. If not selected all dance styles will be found.

Advanced Constraints: This enables some special searches, including search by events name, arbitrary keyword and/or specific states.

You may select dances using any combination of the above choices dates, locations, distances from home, dance styles and event names.

The “suppress maps” option is useful if you expect a large number of events and/or if you have a slow Internet connection. The maps are at least 4 times as large at the textual results, so it does make a big difference.

Save choices: Any time you make a search with this option checked, the selected criteria become your default. Next time you visit the dance gypsy event finder, those choices will automatically be selected. Do note that date values are not selected automatically. If your default search includes dates, future search will select on dates but the default will be one week following the time of request.

General guidelines:

  • Perhaps the most useful restriction is the — search by distance — option. Just specify a distance and any US or Canadian  town and state/province, US zip code or Canadian Canadian postal code — the finder will locate any dances or festivals within the given radius of the target town.
  • You can further restrict the search by specifying only certain dance styles. The advanced search allows you to specify specific towns, states, regions, festivals or keywords: the search will find only those events matching the added details.
  • For text specifications you may specify as many words as you wish, but only those events satisfying all words in your list will be found.
  • You may specify partial names, in which case the requested words are assumed to be the leading letters of the names or words you are seeking.
  • Thus, for example, all of the following will find a dance in New London:
    • New London
    • London
    • New
    • N Lon
    • N L
    • new london (it doesn't care about case)
  • but it will not find misspelled names or near misses, thus
    • "Gnu london" will not work,
  • In general you will do better to under-specify rather than over-specify. For example, even a popular specification like:
    • Camb
    • Eastern Mass
    • August 1 to Aug 31
  • will find only about 10-20 dances — but they will probably all be relevant. On the other hand:
  • “Cambrige” will find none, nor will “Cambridge”, “Western Mass”.
  • If you select “remember my selections”, then once you make a search, your preferences (except for the dates, since they will certainly change) will be remembered for future searches (unless you have cookies disabled).
  • You may tell it to forget your choices at any time.

Find folk, contra and other traditional dance events. Search for dances according to your own individual needs — by any combination of date, location, distance from home, dancestyle, series name or arbitrary keywords. The form can even keep track of your dance choices for next time you visit. And if this doesn’t find it for you, try the Dance Gypsy power search tool — a search engine tuned to the needs of dancers: focusing on known dance-related sites.

( for faster results - for my next visit )

Find: (weekly/monthly) dances and special or annual events

Selecting Dates

You may select the desired time range for the events to find. The default time frame finds dances within the next week, but you may select any time range.

You may enter dates in almost any form (alphabetic or numeric months, most common delimiters, abbreviations even alternative orders and forms not in the “preferred” format). Ambiguities are resolved in favor of future (not past) and North American formats. Donors may chose to have dates displayed in either numeric or alphabetic format

You may either enter a date directly, or modify the date by the forward and backward arrows.

The “preferred” format refers only to the way it is displayed. No matter what the preferred setting is, you may still enter data in any format.

Donors may also select a date from the calendar.

Donors may also optionally use single day, one–click, all event searches. No refinement allowed but it is quick and easy

If you disable time searches option, all future events will be found. To select for recent past events, you must explicitly set the dates.

Remember that that unless you restrict the search in some way, it will find thousands of events.

Specifying Location

New Features

The location selecting tools have improved. The recently added "use current location" feature gives new capabilities to location selectors.

Text entry: You may now use almost any description that uniquely identifies a location: city, town, neighborhood, airport (have a layover in Los Angeles? Find local dance near LAX!... find dances near Back Bay in Boston or Pacific Beach in California...give a zip code..use your own home address...look in foreign countries ... it will even try correct spelling and make a good guess ('Las Vegas' finds the one in Nevada, Not the one in New Mexico)

Geo-location: The Dance Gypsy can figure out your current location, and you c an use that as the base point for your searches. This is very accurate if you have a mobile device, but it also works for most (certainly not all) fixed location computers. Just give your browser permission when it asks. To press the try again button.

Distance-order: By default, results are displayed alphabetically by city. Alternatively, you may choose to display the results by distance (from either your actual location, or any address you specify). You may choose this optiuon even if you do not want to limit the maximum distance.

Privacy notes: The Dance Gypsy does not use or store your location. Automatic determination of location is always "by permission". The browser will ask you for permission to check your location. Most browsers have options to allow a single check or permanent permission for this page. See "help" pages for more information.

Specifying Styles

If you select the "show styles" option, only dances of the type(s) you select will be found.

Select as many styles as you like.

If you do not specify dance styles, dances of all styles will be found

Advanced Options

Names: Finds events by the name or part of the name. For example to find the Falcon Ridge Folk Festival, you could enter the short abbreviated name "falc ri folk"

Keywords: You may restrict the search to a named event or series of dances, such as The “Chaplain Valley Festival” or Hartford’s “Always on Sunday” international dance series, by writing part of its name.

The general keyword search is both powerful and flexible. Use it when you know a general description but perhaps not the exact name: "Thursday VFW contra" or to find groups of dances "Grange" will find all contra dances on thursdays at Grange halls.

States: If you select any target states (or regions or countries), only events in those states will be found — even if you also specified a distance from your home.

Confirmed: If you do not want to consider an event unless it is confirmed, use the confirmed option (default is all)