Dance Exchange

The History of the Dance Exchange

The Dance Exchange is a program of brief reviews by advance request, of classic old dances that you can’t quite remember – or ones from past June Camps that have slipped away. Participants submit suggestions and our committee finds local teachers who can present them. You can get a sense of the range of dances that have been included in the past by looking at this list. 

The June Camp Dance Exchange is a “new” tradition started in 2006. It began when we extended the camp from a Friday night to Sunday morning weekend, to a longer program starting on Thursday evening. Not all attendees could come that early because of work commitments, so we aimed to make the program as flexible and attractive as possible. Realizing that our main professional teachers couldn’t always come as early as Thursday evening, we came up with programming for Friday that included a chance for additional workshops, taught by local teachers. This was well received, and sometimes our primary teachers also joined the Dance Exchange, reviewing dances they had taught at past June Camps or other events which were not part that weekend’s “new” material. What was also useful was that the Dance Exchange dance review went into the Camp DVD, or later the collection of shared digital videos, so that the dances could more easily be retained and stay in our collective Midwestern repertoires.