Festival Stats 2023
Pre-pandemic I would publish a list each year of how many dance weekends, festivals, camps, and long dances contra bands and callers were doing: 2014, 2015, 2016, 2017, 2018, 2019. It's not much work, since I'm already collecting this data for trycontra.com/events, and it's interesting to see how the most-booked performers changed over time.
With covid I wasn't tracking things for a few years, but I do have 2023. Note that the number of events is down 20% from 2019 (132 to 107) and the number of bookings is down a 25% (243 to 179 callers, 242 to 175 bands), so these are somewhat fewer and somewhat smaller events:
Bands
Playing with Fyre 9 The Dam Beavers 8 Stomp Rocket 7 Nova 5 Toss the Possum 5 The Gaslight Tinkers 5 Countercurrent 4 Elixir 4 Hot Coffee Breakdown 4 Kingfisher 4 The Engine Room 4 Alchemy 3 Drive Train 3 Eloise &co 3 Lighthouse 3 River Road 3 Supertrad 3 Wild Asparagus 3 The Figments 3 The Free Raisins 3 The Mean Lids 3 The Stringrays 3 Anadama 2 Audacious 2 Black River Ironworks 2 Contraforce 2 Contrasaurus 2 Gigmeisters 2 KGB 2 Live Wire 2 Ostara 2 Reelplay 2 Riptide 2 The Faux Paws 2 The Latter Day Lizards 2 The Syncopaths 2
Callers
Will Mentor 16 Gaye Fifer 13 Lisa Greenleaf 11 Terry Doyle 8 Bob Isaacs 7 Seth Tepfer 7 Darlene Underwood 6 Cis Hinkle 5 George Marshall 5 Janine Smith 5 Mary Wesley 5 Michael Karcher 5 Jacqui Grennan 4 Lindsey Dono 4 Nils Fredland 4 Ben Sachs-Hamilton 3 David Millstone 3 Diane Silver 3 Frannie Marr 3 Luke Donforth 3 Wendy Graham 3 Adina Gordon 2 Alex Deis-Lauby 2 Beth Molaro 2 Bev Bernbaum 2 Dereck Kalish 2 Emily Rush 2 River Abel 2 Sarah VanNorstrand 2 Steve Zakon-Anderson 2 Sue Hulsether 2 Sue Rosen 2 Susan Michaels 2 Warren Doyle 2