About Set for Spring
Narrative
Oklahoma City hosted an English Country dance weekend in February of 2008 that was the first full weekend of ECD held in Oklahoma or Texas in many years. That very successful weekend, with Jacqueline Schwab teaching the dances and playing with her bandmates in Bare Necessities, showed the Oklahoma and Texas ECD communities that a weekend event was quite viable.
Later that same year, Joseph Pimentel traveled to Austin and saw the beautiful grand ballroom of the Texas Federation of Women's Clubs building. He insisted that we hold an English Country dance weekend in "The Fed" sometime in the spring when fields in central Texas are covered by wildflowers. He volunteered to call and asked his friends in Goldcrest to play. The Austin ECD community stepped up to organize it, and the first weekend called Set for Spring was held in April 2009.
It was decided that Set for Spring should rotate between the Texas and Oklahoma ECD communities. The group in each city is relatively small; rotating Set for Spring reduces the work and risk of burnout for the organizers as well as the financial risk. Because of this rotation, each Set for Spring is unique, although graphics, decorations, and files are often shared among the cities.
Dallas hosted the second Set for Spring. Since they hold their contra dance festival in April, they held Set for Spring in March of 2010. It has been in March every year since then, although it is not tied to a specific weekend.
Table of Events
| Date |
Location |
Band |
Caller |
| April 3-5, 2009 |
Austin |
Goldcrest |
Joseph Pimentel |
| March 19-21, 2010 |
Dallas |
Foxfire |
Joseph Pimentel |
| March 11-13, 2011 |
OKC |
Childgrove |
Sharon Green |
| March 23-25, 2012 |
Austin |
Foxfire |
Scott Higgs |
| March 8-10, 2013 |
Dallas |
A Joyful Noise |
Gene Murrow |
| March 14-16, 2014 |
OKC |
3rd String Trio |
Joanna Reiner |
| March 13-15, 2015 |
Houston |
Goldcrest |
Joseph Pimentel |
| March 11-13, 2016 |
Dallas |
Foxfire |
Brad Foster |
| March 24-26, 2017 |
Austin |
Persons of Quality |
Joanna Reiner |
| March 9-11, 2018 |
San Antonio |
Goldcrest |
Joseph Pimentel |
| March 15-17, 2019 |
OKC |
Alchemy |
Graham Christian |
| March 20-22, 2020 |
Houston |
Cancelled, rescheduled for 2022. |
| March 12-14, 2021 |
Dallas |
Cancelled, rescheduled for 2023. |
| The following is the tentative schedule for the next few years. |
| March 18-20, 2022 |
Houston |
Anna Patton,
Daron Douglas,
Karen Axelrod |
Joanna Reiner |
| 2023 |
Dallas |
Rachel Bell,
Susan Kevra,
Dave Wiesler |
David Millstone |
| 2024 |
Austin |
|
|
| 2025 |
OKC |
|
|
Dance and Tune
For the 2015 event in Houston, Joseph Pimentel wrote a celebratory dance to a tune by Dave Wiesler, both called Set for Spring. Instructions for the dance with teaching notes and background information and a PDF of Dave's tune can be found on Joseph's website.
Dave made a "solo piano, quick-and-dirty with no editing" recording of the tune that he's graciously allowed to be distributed for those groups needing to dance to recorded music. Here it is: Set for Spring on piano.
A video of the inaugural dancing can be found here on YouTube.
