You've probably heard of square dancing, but have you heard of contra dancing?
They both include live dancing, live music, a caller to direct the dancers and a place to find community.
In contra dancing though, the dancers line up in two lines, instead of a four-person square, like square dancing. It has some roots in 17th-century France and folks like Henry Ford and Ralph Page helped revitalize the dance in the U.S.
It's popular around the country, including with the Boise Contra Dance Society, which holds dances the second Saturday of the month at the Nampa Valley Grange Hall.
Callers and dancers Pat Blatter and Krista Shellie, along with Lon Stewart, the Boise Contra Dancers Society president, and Acrasians band members Tim Sommer (on guitar) and Ken Pollard (on fiddle), joined Idaho Matters live in studio to give us a bit of a lesson.
