The Tuscaloosa Contra Dancers and The Birmingham Friends of Old-Time Music and Dance (FOOTMAD) provide monthly opportunities for you to shake the dust offa yer dancing shoes. The folks are friendly, the music is live (and acoustic), and they'll even teach you how to contra dance.

Contra dancing resembles square dancing in that you have a caller giving instructions, but the patterns in which the dancers move are different from squares. Gary Shapiro explains: "Contra dance has absolutely nothing whatsoever to do with country line dancing. Nada. Zilch. And if it did I would deny it. And contra dance groups receive absolutely no funding from Oliver North." If you visit Gary's Web page, he'll explain further.

FOOTMAD dances are usually on the 2nd Saturday of the month and TCD dances are usually on the 4th Saturday.

As always, we at ATA say, "Save that last dance for us."