The following overviews are taken from https://bacds.org/series/contra/ and supplemented with info retrieved from archive.org and personal memories.
Also see the special section for Kirston Koths.
11/12/25

Regularly-Scheduled Contra Dance and Square Dance Series

BACDS operates regularly-scheduled contra dance series on Wednesday evenings in Berkeley and Saturday evenings in Palo Alto. San Francisco Bay Area, one of our regular contra dances is close to you.

Berkeley Contra Dance (1st/3rd/5th Wednesdays) 1983-present

This dance began its life at John Muir School in Berkeley during the summer of 1983, organized by Eric Black after the “Amazingly Good Fun” dance series originated by Kirston Koths moved from Thursday nights to Fridays. The caller at the first summer dances was current San Diego area dance leader Harry Brauser. Numerous programmers, including Harry Brauser, long-time caller and BACDS Board member Eric Black, and current Ashland, Oregon caller Ruth Lowengart, have contributed to high-caliber mid-week contra dancing in Berkeley throughout the years.

The dance has moved from venue to venue, including a stint at the UC Berkeley Gymnasium, and there are rumors that dancers enjoyed a clandestine skinny dip at the pool next door during the mid-dance break. We have no official comment on those rumors.

Since his Bay Area arrival in 1994, highly-regarded caller and dance author Erik Hoffman has been the programmer for this odd-Wednesday-evening series. In late 2018 Audrey Knuth came aboard as co-programmer but retired from the position when she left the area. Music is provided on most evenings by an open band led by groups whose genres range from old-time to New England to electric. Open caller evenings on most fifth Wednesdays complete this dance's reputation as an incubator for up-and-coming musical and calling talent. Because of availability of Christ Church, this series moved from Wednesdays to Thursdays in September 2022, with a brief stint on Tuesdays, and as of October 2025 is back to the original Wednesdays.

San Francisco Wednesday Contra (2nd and 4th Wednesdays) 2024-

This new series started up in August 2024, held at the Polish Club in the Mission District.

Palo Alto Contra Dance (2nd, 4th and 5th Saturdays) 1975-present

The Palo Alto contra dance, originally the Stanford contra dance, is the oldest continuous contra series in the Bay Area, perhaps in California. It was started in 1975 by Nick Harris, then a 1st year grad student, recreating the contra dances from western Massachusetts, southern Vermont, and New Hampshire he enjoyed as an undergrad. The house band eventually started calling themselves Blackberry Blossom and included Derek Booth on piano, accordion and concertina, Liz Dreisbach on flute and pennywhistle, Stan Kramer on fiddle and bass, Warren Nokleberg on banjo, Ben Dawson on fiddle and Ginnie Mickelson on piano. Nick called and played hammer dulcimer.

The series built up over 4 years from an initial 20 to 30 dancers to around 150 to 200, with lots of good dancing and great energy. Brad Foster took over when Nick left for a job in Oklahoma. Brad organized the dance for several years, and included himself on the schedule as caller or musician (sometimes both), as well as a constant parade of local musicians and callers. Many nationally known bands and musicians initially got their chops at this dance.

When Brad left the area in 1982 to become the CDSS Program Director, Susan Murphy took on the series and ran it until she decided to become a veterinarian in 1983 and work with a different sort of dancing animals. (Susan also helped run the BACDS American Dance and Music Camp at Mendocino for several years, through 1990).

Eric Black became the programmer and chief caller for the Palo Alto contra dance in 1983, shepherding its moves to various locations including the Mountain View Masonic Temple and Cubberly Pavilion in Palo Alto, before setting into the Peninsula YWCA for 17 years. In 2004 the dance moved to its current home at the First United Methodist Church in downtown Palo Alto, with Diane Zingale managing the dance.

In late 2009 the weight was lifted from Eric & Diane's shoulders with the formation of a Programming Committee, with Alan Winston as booking coordinator for the dance, and a Manager Committee, with Joyce Fortune as Chief Cat Herder, a role she served brilliantly for over a decade.

The programming is selected to make contras fun for newcomers and old-timers alike (with a handful of squares to keep things interesting), danced to music drawn from traditions ranging from Celtic, New England and Quebecois to Southern, bluegrass and old time.

The dance features a wide variety of callers and musicians, both local Bay Area and visiting from other parts of the country.

In post-Pandemic 2023, Palo Alto Contra resumed a regular schedule of fourth and fifth Saturdays and occasional off-cycle dances. In January 2024 the series regained the 2nd Saturday slot, and the Palo Alto Contra Dance is back on its decades-long schedule of 2nd, 4th, and 5th Saturdays near the Stanford campus.

Defunct Series

East Bay Friday Contra Dance (1980-2009)

Kirston Koths started this dance in 1980 as a Wednesday-night dance at the First Congregational Church of Berkeley. After working its way through Hearst Gymnasium at UC Berkeley, John Muir School, Glenview and St. Leo's Schools in Oakland, St. Joseph's and Finn Hall in Berkeley, and Prospect Sierra Middle School in El Cerrito before moving to Humanist Hall in Oakland in January 2008.

Kirston retired from programming this series after 25 years of amazingly good fun. His successor was Lynn Ackerson, who programmed with the intention of showcasing good callers who don't show up very much on the BACDS calendar. 

See Timeline in the Kirston Koths section and Kirston's history documents on the main history page for details. The final dance at Humanist Hall was September 2009.

San Francisco Contra Dance (1981-2020)

The original San Francisco contra dance began life in 1981 as a Thursday night dance run by the San Francisco Folk Music Club's Plowshares Cafe. This early series featured English country dances, old-time squares, New England contras, and open mic dances. It became a BACDS series in October 1982, and added the fourth Friday dances in October 1986, absorbing an early Marin County series.

Charlie Fenton was the programmer of this series from its inception until 2011. His love of New England music and dance drives both his dance selection and the music. This dance also plays host to both regional and visiting callers and musicians.

The dance did not resume after the pandemic. See above for the current SF dance (2nd & 4th Wednesdays at the Polish Club)

More info:

For more information about Plowshares, see Susan Wageman's thesis Plowshares Coffee House: People, Music & Community.

The dance was held on 1st and 3rd Saturdays, initially at California Hall 625 Polk St (Polk Gulch/Tenderloin), and then (for most of its life) at St. Paul's Presbyterian Church, 43rd & Judah (outer Sunset).

In 2011, Charlie Fenton retired from managing and programming the dance and turned it over to a committee which included Yael & Marcia Rosenblatt and Chris Knepper (programmer). A celebration "You're a Good Man, Charlie Fenton", with a cavalcade of callers and musicians, was held July 16 2011.

The 4th Friday dance was eventually discontinued due to lack of attendance.  However, it did benefit from a flat monthly rental rate - i.e. it did not cost any more to rent the hall for 3 nights per month than 2.

The series did not resume after the pandemic, one of the factors being the decaying state of the building and the closure of the church.  There have been reports that St. Paul's may be torn down for housing (see SF Chronicle article Jan 2020)

California Hall itself has an interesting history.  It was built in 1912 as a German social meeting hall named Das Deutsche Haus.  It was renamed to California Hall during World War I. Beginning in the 1960's, it became a landmark venue in the fight for gay rights.  During the 1980's (when the contra dance was held in one of the smaller rooms upstairs), we could access the balcony of the main auditorium to observe the amazing annual drag balls that occurred there. The building was later used by the California Culinary Academy, and is now part of the Academy of Art University campus.

Hayward Contra Dance (2007-present; 2017-2020 as a BACDS dance)

The Hayward Contra Dance was started in April 2007, by a group of people led by Karen Fontana, who set up a new organization, the Traditional Dancers of the Golden State (TDOGS) to run it. This was at a time when most BACDS Contra dances were essentially “owned” by a house caller who programmed and managed the dance, and did the majority of the calling. The TDOGS management was looking to try out new ideas and make the dance more interesting and welcoming. By and large, they succeeded, and over the years, the BACDS dances began to be managed by committees that were happy to adopt some of the ideas that had worked so well in Hayward.

Its scheduling as a Sunday afternoon dance (4th and 5th Sundays 4pm-7pm) made it attractive to dancers from as far away as Sacramento, Santa Cruz, and Monterey.

After a few years, Karen and Davey moved on to other things, and Kelsey Hartman and Susan Pleck took over the leadership of TDOGS. They also tried many new ideas, including trial dances in Walnut Creek and Danville and starting the November "Twelve Hour Twirl" when the Foothill Dancers in Grass Valley/Nevada City discontinued its "Fall has Sprung" 12 hour contra marathon. The 12-hour Twirl ran at the Veterans Memorial Hall in downtown Hayward for three years (2014, 2015, 2016). Meanwhile, more and more of the day-to-day work of managing the Hayward Contra came back to rest on Kelsey and Susan’s shoulders, and they decided they were ready to step down.

The Hayward dance became a BACDS dance in January 2017, managed by a committee headed by Jens Dill, Matt Mathis, Jack Engstrom, Mandy Souza, Les Addison, and Elizabeth Morgan (with lots of others helping out behind the scenes). it was the first BACDS dance to adopt gender-neutral calling, using Larks & Ravens (later Robins) role names.

Coming out of the COVID19 pandemic, the Hayward committee felt ready to restart (with precautions such as preregistration and testing, mask, vaccination & reporting requirements) before the BACDS board finalized its opening protocols, and Hayward once again became an independent dance, on 2nd and 4th Sundays 4pm-7pm.  For information about the Hayward Contra series visit sfbaycontra.org.

South Bay Contra (Sunday afternoon) - ??-2020?

Shirley Worth started the dance series in partnership with the First Unitarian Church of San Jose in 2011. Originally the series mixed English and contra each time, but eventually the dances became dedicated to either English or contra on alternate Sundays. The contra series was programmed by Claire Takemori; it did not resume after the COVID pandemic.

Santa Cruz - broke off from BACDS in ??

Mill Valley?

Fairfax?

Happy Hearts, Alameda (non-BACDS) 2021-2024

Coming out of the COVID19 pandemic, as other dance series were restarting with various requirements including vaccination and masking, a group of dancers (which included Vicki Lapp, who sadly passed away in February 2025) wanted to provide an welcoming environment for dancers who were not vaccinated or unable to mask while dancing (though initially still requiring testing, preregistration, and reporting). The first dance at the Home of Truth garden cottage in Alameda was New Years Eve December 31 2021.  The dance continued monthly (third Saturday)  until December 2024.

Canyon (non-BACDS) ??-2015

The Canyon contra was a monthly dance (first Saturdays) at Canyon School in Canyon, CA. Canyon is a tiny community in Contra Costa County on Pinehurst Road, near Moraga, over the hill from the Montclair neighborhood in Oakland. Tom Thoreau was the driving force, manager, programmer, and frequent caller. It was a training ground for new callers and musicians, though sometimes the musicians outnumbered the dancers.  This is the only dance I have seen where, when there was not quite enough dancers for a second line, a single line would run diagonally.  On warm nights, sometimes the dance was held outside on the wooden pathway. It was a community dance (many of the regulars lived in Canyon and children were frequent attendees) and included a potluck dinner.

I don't know when it started, but the earliest page on the (now defunct) website (retrieved from archive.org) is dated December 2008 and includes photos from 2007. But it was going for several years before that.

Below is a photo of the 11 person band at the final dance November 5 2015.