2026-01-16 21:00:00
It's a holiday. The cousins are over, and the kids are having a great time. Unfortunately, that includes rampaging through the kitchen. We're trying to cook, so there's a "no cutting through the kitchen" rule. Imagine enforcement looks like:
Kid: [dashes into kitchen, pursued by cousin]
Adult: Out of the kitchen!
Kid: Sorry! [Continues their path, leaving through the other door; escapes pursuit from more rule-abiding cousin]
This doesn't work! The kid got what they wanted out of this interaction, and isn't going to change their behavior. Instead, I need to make it be not worth their while:
Kid: [dashes into kitchen, pursued by cousin]
Adult: No cutting through the kitchen! [Physically rebuffs intruder]!
Kid: Sorry! [Forced to leave through the door they entered by; caught by cousin.]
Other examples:
Sneak candy, spit it out and forfeit dessert.
Use sibling's tablet time, lose your own.
Interrupt, be ignored.
The general principle is that if you want to limit behavior the combination of the gains from rule-breaking and penalty from punishment need to put the kid in a worse position than if they'd never broken the rule.
This isn't just a parenting thing: it's common to say that "crime should not pay", and many legal systems prohibit unjust enrichment. One place I'd like to see this implemented is airplane evacuation. If the safety announcements included "In the event of an emergency evacuation, any carry-on luggage you bring will be confiscated and destroyed. You will also be fined." we would have more JAL 516 (379 occupants, zero deaths) and less Aeroflot 1492 or Emirates 521.
2026-01-15 21:00:00
The "dance weekend" is a very common pattern for contra dance communities around the country. I think of the central example as something like:
Examples, from my 2025 calendar: Beantown Stomp, Chehalis, Dance in the Desert, Dancing Fish, Five Borough Fling, Fleur de Lis Fling, Hashdance, and Summer Soiree.
I've seen a bunch of misunderstandings that come from people not being on the same page about what is normal: many dance weekends are organized by volunteers, some of which are doing it for the first time; performers often are new to this as well. As someone who has both played for and organized dance weekends, I thought it might be helpful to try and write down what I think of as typical if an event is bringing in a band or caller from out of town.
Note that I'm trying to document the status quo here, saying "this is" and not "this is what should be". I would be sad if in places where the status quo isn't great people pointed at this doc and said "Jeff says it's supposed to be that way"; this post is not doing that! Additionally, performers and events are of course free to agree on something that isn't the most common arrangement!
As of the beginning of 2026, here's what I think of as the most common arrangement:
Housing: the event provides accommodation, most commonly at someone's house. Performers may need to share rooms, but not beds. If the best travel option means coming a day early or staying a day late the event still provides housing for those additional days. If the performer wants to stay in town longer for sightseeing, that's on them. If the performer has accessibility needs (ex: pet allergies) this is good to discuss up front.
Travel: the event pays for round trip economy travel, by air if driving would be too long. My sense is that flying becomes customary at the 5-hour mark, but if you're in the 4hr-7hr range it's worth checking in. With air travel this isn't a commitment to take the literally cheapest flight, but performers should use their judgement and try to save the event money. Travel includes bags and/or early boarding if that's needed for the musician to safely bring their instrument, but make sure the event isn't surprised. Flight reimbursement is due when the flight is paid for, not at the event.
Travel includes the cost of getting from one's house to the airport, such as public transit, taxi, or airport parking. Events are often not thinking about this cost, though, so if it's going to be significant it's good to bring it up.
For driving from out of town, reimbursing at the IRS mileage rate is standard, but organizations sometimes want to reimburse only gas and tolls. While the gas and tolls are most directly attributable to this trip, the other expenses (purchase, insurance, maintenance) that go into the IRS rate are real costs too.
Instruments: the performers are expected to bring their instruments, with the event covering the cost. The exception is when this isn't economical, which most often happens with keyboard: this might cost $300 to safely fly round trip. In that case the event should provide a keyboard, typically on loan from someone in the community. The event should make sure the instrument is good quality, but performers should not expect exact models (events are generally not going to be renting instruments). Other examples of instruments (or equipment) I'd expect an event to supply as needed include amps, drum kits, drum thrones, and double basses.
Real pianos are even trickier: many venues don't have them, and the ones that do exist are often poorly maintained and out of tune. At this point I wouldn't recommend trying to play dance weekends on real pianos, but if this is important to you definitely bring it up with the event early.
As someone who plays a lot of instruments, there's also a sense that performers should be thinking about what's economical to fly with in deciding what their setup should be. If you'll need more than a checked item, carry-on item, and personal item, it's worth thinking about whether you could simplify your setup.
Transportation: the event provides required transportation during the event, primarily between accomodations and the venue. Sometimes this is letting the performers use a car, sometimes it's giving rides, sometimes it's everything within walking distance.
Food: the event provides food. This can be food at dancers' houses, take-out, reimbursing restaurants; whatever works best for the event as long as the performers are fed. Food while traveling is usually not covered, though I think there's a good argument that it should be. Events should check with performers about dietary restrictions, and performers should also be proactive in communicating their dietary restrictions.
Sound: the event provides the sound system, and someone to run it. This includes a full-range PA, cables, mics, DI boxes, and stage monitors. The expectation used to be a minimum of two monitor mixes, but these days I think the standard is a monitor mix per performer (including the caller!) up to at least 4-6 mixes. If this is important to you, check in about it.
Guests: most events allow a performer to bring a plus-one, and sometimes multiple guests. The event almost never covers their travel, but often provides free or discounted admission, and usually charges accommodations at cost (which might be zero).
Working hours: typically you're on stage for 7 to 9.5hr of dancing, plus maybe a workshop, for a total of 8.5-11hr. Performers vary a lot in stamina, so if an event wants something towards the high end here this is good to check in on.
Cancellation: this doesn't happen often, which means people don't think about it, and there can be a lot of friction and misunderstandings here. If the event cancels, they should reimburse the performer's non-refundable expenses, and if it's less than ~3 months out also cover pay. If the performer has to cancel (ex: double booked, family emergency) they should generally not expect any payment and may need to refund already-reimbursed travel, but organizations should try to be compassionate.
Sickness is very tricky. Traditionally, my impression is that performers would still do gigs if they were physically able to, even if they were quite sick. With COVID this has changed, where now dance organizations often say they don't want anyone to attend if sick. This is good in some ways, but dance organizations often don't really think through what it would mean if a performer woke up the day of their flight with a sore throat. I think what's customary today is for performers to communicate symptoms to the organizers, and if the organizers ask the performer not to come still pay the performer and reimburse non-refundable expenses.
Megaband: it's common for weekends with multiple bands to want to have a final session where they all play together. I find this is pretty high-variance: sometimes the bands gel well and it's really fun, other times they just have really different ideas of what makes good dance music and either band would have been better on their own. Occasionally, after talking with the other band, we've told organizers that we think this wouldn't go well with our particular combination.
Pay: since the event is covering the big expenses, you're essentially talking about what the performer will net from the event before taxes. I've shared some of my recent numbers here, though this is a place where especially in-demand performers are likely able to negotiate more.
Contracts: most of the time events don't do contracts. Instead, the contra dance world operates on reputation, keeping one's word, and trying to do the right thing. I do think contracts are great, if people are good at setting out what their expectations are clearly, but if you're bringing in lawyers they can get expensive, and my impression is the less formal system actually works well. It is good to be clear, though, and I hope this post is a resource for people in thinking through places where they might not be on the same page.
As I wrote above, this is definitely not how you have to structure your agreement and specifics can and should vary. If you want to agree on a flat fee for pay + travel, or even a flat fee for everything on this list, that's between the event and the performers. But I think this default deal is good to keep in mind, so you don't agree in principle and then realize this isn't going to work.
Thanks to Max Newman for reviewing a draft of this post.
2026-01-12 21:00:00
I play for contra dances, and a core part of our culture is that we always have live music. It's not that live music is categorically better: if you ran a test where you put soundproof one-way glass in front of the musicians and secretly played a live recording from a great band playing for the same dance it would probably go really well. Instead, we insist on live music because that's the kind of culture we're trying to build, one where the performers are part of the community, where anyone can start playing for dancing, and where the music grows and changes with the culture.
Other groups went different ways. The late 1940s explosion in square dancing happened in part because of technological progress: it was now practical to record a band once and play it back millions of times to support dancing all over the country. Callers would buy a sound system, including a record player, and all they needed was some dancers and a hall. This let modern square dancing grow enormously.
Contra dance took a different path, coming through the 70s folk revival with a strong commitment to live music. Musicians were drawn to the dance form, and dancers learned to play. With regular opportunities to perform, they learned to adapt playing to support the dancing. As the choreography and musical sensibilities changed over the years, the live tradition could change with it. I love what bands are doing now, and if you compare hall recordings to decades ago it's impressive how much the genre has matured and flourished.
It's not just contra dance: there are communities of people who hand-craft assembly to make demos, even though the software industry has long-since automated this with compilers in typical development. My cousin makes bagpipes out of wood, even though you'd have trouble hearing the difference between these and something injection-molded from plastic. My dad has serving bowls we made out of clay, even though they're heavier and less round than what a machine could press. People still watch humans play Go, even though computers are better now. People watch humans race, even though machines are faster, and they also watch machines race. This can be a categorical decision to always go with human effort, or a case where both forms exist side by side but with prestige or sentiment pushing towards the human.
I like this as a model for what art and achievement could look like in a post-AI world, assuming we make it through to the other side. Some communities can embrace technology and explore what's possible with full AI assistance. Other communities can make an intentional decision to keep doing things the traditional way, accepting that this will be less perfect and less efficient. Yet others can mix them, appreciating what humans have been able to make for what it is, while also getting the practical benefits of automation. I'm not worried that the music I love will disappear, because economically it's been obsolete for decades. It's still here because we want it to be.
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2026-01-11 21:00:00
Our family has half a Honda Fit, and it's great! Reliable, pretty good mileage, holds our family of five plus a vacation's worth of luggage, seats fold flat for when I'm bringing sound equipment to dances. It would be nice, though, to be able to seat more than five people.
None of the options are very good: you pay a lot for a sixth seat, not just in price but in size and fuel economy. What I've wanted for years, though, is a six door car: the same height and width as a hatchback, with three rows of seats. All three rows would go in front of the rear axle, unlike a station wagon, so you have plenty of room for luggage and no one is sitting in the crumple zone. And you could fold both sets of rear seats flat, to get a really great cargo area when you needed that.
I had a very hard time getting LLMs to draw what I had in mind (they're stubbornly convinced, like most people, that cars do not have six doors) but I did eventually get Gemini to draw me a Fit Stretch:
This would add three feet, for a total of 16.5ft, a little shorter than a Ford Explorer and most of a foot shorter than a Honda Odyssey, and likely get gas mileage only ~10-15% below the traditional Fit.
When I look internationally, or historically in the US, where there are more people who want this kind of combination of large carrying capacity and small size, manufacturers consistently haven't gone this six door route. Just looking at Honda there's the original Odyssey, Freed, Mobilio, Stream, and Jade, all with at most four hinged and/or sliding doors.
The wheelbase gets a little long, but it's still manageable. The 2nd generation Fit (best Fit!) had a wheelbase of 98.4" (8.2ft) with 5.9" of ground clearance, and this would add about 3ft, so we're talking 134.4" (11.2ft). This is just under the 136" wheelbase of a 10ft-cargo RAM ProMaster van. [1]
Why doesn't anyone want to make one? I asked LLMs to speculate, and the answers I got were:
It would cannibalize sales for an established brand, because cheap high-capacity options attract families that would otherwise buy much higher margin vehicles (SUVs, minivans).
Engineering for side-impact protection is much harder. You'd need a second B-pillar on each side, and it would be hard to meet crash targets without adding large amounts of weight.
It looks weird. People would say they want this on specs, but then not actually buy it when they saw it on the lot.
The turning circle is high. You'd go from ~35ft to ~45ft. This is big, though it's less than the F150 which is surprisingly popular as a family vehicle.
These aren't great, but they don't seem to me like they kill the concept. I wonder if we'll see someone make one at some point?
[1] The ProMaster has 6.9" ground clearance, 1" higher. You could
raise a stretched Fit by an inch, but you wouldn't necessarily have
to: the 3rd generation Fit could be configured as low as 4.4" with a
99.6" wheelbase. Both 4.4" clearance on a 99.6" wheelbase and 5.9"
clearance on a 134.4" wheelbase have a breakover angle of just over
10°.
2026-01-08 21:00:00
I hear people talking about "skyrocketing" rents, with the idea that rent is going up quickly. This isn't my impression of what's happening, and when I look at the data it's not what I see either. Instead, rents are too high, and they were rising quickly pre-covid, but recently they've been stable in real terms.
Here's the data I know best, the price of a 2br that I calculate on my Boston Rent Map:
The median Boston-Area rent in December 2025 was $3,350. That's up from $2,300 in February 2013, or $3,215 in current dollars. Rent has gone up, but just about matching inflation.
I see the same thing nationally. Here's the Consumer Price Index for All Urban Consumers: Rent of Primary Residence in U.S. City Average (CUSR0000SEHA), adjusted for inflation:
Rent needs to go down, and I'm very supportive of efforts to remove supply restrictions so landlords can stop making windfall profits. But it's important to be clear-eyed about what the issue is: rent has gone up a lot in places where there are the most jobs, then then it has stayed high for the last decade plus.
EDIT: people have asked if this is still true if we exclude the cost of housing from the determination of inflation (since otherwise it's partly circular) or if we compare the cost of housing to median income (to better capture affordability). This doesn't end up changing the picture much: excluding shelter from inflation pushes costs up a little; comparing to income pushes costs down a little.
2026-01-06 21:00:00
Someone asked me which contra dance bands and callers played the most major gigs in 2025, which reminded me that I hadn't put out my annual post yet! Here's what I have, drawing from the big spreadsheet that backs TryContra Events.
In 2025 we were up to 142 events, which is an increase of 9% from 2024 (131), and above pre-pandemic numbers. New events included Chain Reaction (Maine dance weekend), Galhala (women's dance weekend), and On to the Next (one-day queer-normative dance event). Additionally, a few events returned for the first time since the pandemic (ex: Lava Meltdown).
For bands, River Road and Countercurrent continue to be very popular, with the Dam Beavers edging out Playing with Fyre for third. For callers it's Will Mentor, Alex Deis-Lauby, and Lisa Greenleaf, which is the first time a Millenial has made it into the top two. This is also a larger trend: in 2024 there was only one Millennial (still Alex) in the top ten and in 2023 there were zero; in 2025 there were three (Michael Karcher and Lindsey Dono in addition to Alex). While bands don't have generations the same way individuals do, bands definitely skew younger: in something like seven of the top ten bands the median member is Millennial or younger.
When listing bands and callers, my goal is to count ones with at least two big bookings, operationalized as events with at least 9hr of contra dancing. Ties are broken randomly (no longer alphabetically!) Let me know if I've missed anything?
Bands
| River Road | 13 |
| Countercurrent | 11 |
| The Dam Beavers | 10 |
| Playing with Fyre | 8 |
| Toss the Possum | 7 |
| Kingfisher | 6 |
| The Engine Room | 6 |
| The Stringrays | 5 |
| Supertrad | 5 |
| Stomp Rocket | 5 |
| Wild Asparagus | 5 |
| Topspin | 4 |
| The Free Raisins | 4 |
| Northwoods | 4 |
| Stove Dragon | 4 |
| The Mean Lids | 3 |
| Red Case Band | 3 |
| Spintuition | 3 |
| Turnip the Beet | 3 |
| Hot Coffee Breakdown | 3 |
| Thunderwing | 3 |
| Raven & Goose | 3 |
| Good Company | 3 |
| Joyride | 3 |
| The Gaslight Tinkers | 3 |
| Chimney Swift | 2 |
| The Moving Violations | 2 |
| The Syncopaths | 2 |
| The Latter Day Lizards | 2 |
| Lighthouse | 2 |
| Root System | 2 |
| Contraforce | 2 |
| Sugar River Band | 2 |
| The Berea Castoffs | 2 |
| The Fiddle Hellions | 2 |
| Lift Ticket | 2 |
| The Buzz Band | 2 |
| The Faux Paws | 2 |
| Nova | 2 |
Callers
| Will Mentor | 17 |
| Alex Deis-Lauby | 14 |
| Lisa Greenleaf | 14 |
| Gaye Fifer | 13 |
| Michael Karcher | 11 |
| Lindsey Dono | 10 |
| Seth Tepfer | 10 |
| Steve Zakon-Anderson | 8 |
| Bob Isaacs | 7 |
| Darlene Underwood | 7 |
| Terry Doyle | 6 |
| Adina Gordon | 6 |
| George Marshall | 5 |
| Sue Rosen | 5 |
| Cis Hinkle | 5 |
| Mary Wesley | 5 |
| Rick Mohr | 5 |
| Koren Wake | 4 |
| Wendy Graham | 4 |
| Jeremy Korr | 4 |
| Luke Donforth | 4 |
| Susan Petrick | 4 |
| Dereck Kalish | 3 |
| Warren Doyle | 3 |
| Angela DeCarlis | 3 |
| Jacqui Grennan | 3 |
| Maia McCormick | 3 |
| Emily Rush | 3 |
| Lyss Adkins | 3 |
| Janine Smith | 3 |
| Devin Pohly | 3 |
| Claire Takemori | 3 |
| Qwill Duvall | 2 |
| Frannie Marr | 2 |
| Bev Bernbaum | 2 |
| Janet Shepherd | 2 |
| Diane Silver | 2 |
| Chris Bischoff | 2 |
| Ben Sachs-Hamilton | 2 |
| Timothy Klein | 2 |
| Kenny Greer | 2 |
| Isaac Banner | 2 |
| Susan Kevra | 2 |