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 Cancelled due to COVID-19 Houston Anna Patton,
Daron Douglas,
Karen Axelrod		 Joanna Reiner
March 12-14, 2021 Dallas Rachel Bell,
Susan Kevra,
Dave Wiesler		 David Millstone

Dance and Tune

For the 2015 event in Houston, Joseph Pimentel wrote a celebratory dance to a tune by Dave Weisler, 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.