If you are new to English Country Dance, take time to familiarize yourself with ECD terms. Otherwise, you won’t be able to call, and even if you aren’t calling, learning them will make you a better dancer. Here are some websites I found to be particularly helpful.
Glossary of ECD words and terms
Elements and written definitions of ECD
Don’t be overwhelmed- you don’t have to learn all those terms right away! Most dances use a basic staple of simple figures that are used over and over.
You can find a listing of the dances we do at our monthly events by clicking the “Index” tab. Some of them have accompanying videos that we produced and added to help newcomers. Watching recordings is a great way to learn ECD. While we strive to always be adding new videos to the written instructions, it’s a big job to create instruction-worthy videos. Here are some other sites that are good video resources:
Fain Music’s collection of dance figures
Animated, view-from-the-top figures
Here are some other sites with written instructions for specific dances: