Contra Dance

We have decided with news of local cases of COVID-19 in the neighboring counties to cancel the dance in order to help keep our community safe and healthy. We are so sad to miss you all. We will continue to keep the community’s safety in mind in the coming months and let you know what has beed decided. Stay tuned, stay safe, stay clean, love hard, have fun. 

Michael Karcher

calling to

Ground Lift

Michael Karcher hails from Seattle and has been having the time of his life calling around the Pacific Northwest over the last few years – including calling at the infamous Northwest Folklife Festival and other contra camps. When wasn’t isn’t calling, he was pursuing a PhD in statistics at the University of Washington and dancing in and around Seattle.

Ground Lift is genre-bending project from Chistopher Jacoby and Brian Lindsay, featuring live electronic music and wild fiddling. The goal of this project is to create electronic and pop music for contra dances, and still capture the seamless fluency of dancers, caller, and musicians that we experience at a dance with acoustic instruments. This is not remixed top-40 pop songs, nor is it simply fiddle tunes with a heavy beat underneath. Blending new compositions and arrangements (sometimes using tunes that already exist) Ground Lift crafts sets that support the structure and flow of a contra dance, and bring along a whole bag of juicy synth sounds and beats to make it a party.

With a wealth of experience as dance musicians, Brian and Christopher are equally comfortable playing acoustic sets for contra and English Country dances. For those dances, the band will feature Christopher’s creative guitar accompaniment and a bevy of tunes from Brian’s 5-string fiddle.