Dance, Music, & Song CampsJune 13-20, 2026 // Lexington, MI
During Dance, Music & Spice at Camp Cavell with Steven Bluestein!
Program Description
This course is part of the Community Contra Lab at Dance, Music & Spice this year! Three specially designed intensive courses—for callers, musicians, and sound operators—will be woven together through shared labs, practice dances, and cross-course exercises designed to show how each role supports the others. You’ll gain practical insight into the whole ecosystem of a contra dance, learning how great communication and teamwork elevate every role on the floor and on stage.
Designed for beginner to intermediate audio engineers, the Sound Operators Intensive will give you a solid, hands-on foundation in everything you need to confidently run sound for a dance. Using the gear you’re most likely to encounter at dance, we’ll start with the absolute basics, including:
- Understanding different types of cables, connectors, and signal flow
- How to set up a simple system from scratch
- Analog vs. digital mixers
- The range of microphones used for fiddle, piano, caller, and other instruments
- How to make tasteful use of EQ, compression, and gain staging to help musicians sound their best without overprocessing
Through the week, you’ll learn how to:
- Troubleshoot common mishaps quickly and calmly when something goes wrong mid-dance
- Communicate effectively with musicians and callers
- Read the room for nonverbal cues and listen from the floor
- Foster a collaborative environment where everyone feels heard.
Participants will come away from this course with practical techniques, checklists, and the confidence to run a full evening dance with clarity, ease, and musical sensitivity.
Course Details and Participation Requirements
There is a limit of 10 participants for this course.
All are welcome! Please come with a willingness to learn and experiment.
Each participant is expected to attend at least two daily workshop sessions and may have additional opportunities to practice skills throughout the week.
Course Leader
Registration and Fees
If you apply by March 8, you’ll be notified about your acceptance status around March 10. Applications received after March 8 will be reviewed on a rolling basis. If you are accepted to the course, you will also be accepted to its host session. The fee below covers both the course and the host session.
If the course is oversubscribed on March 8, there will be a lottery for admission, with some preference given to CDSS Members and applicants supported by their local community through priority admission nominations and/or matching scholarships. A CDSS Affiliate can vouch for a participant by nominating them for priority admission and/or offering funds for a matching scholarship. This kind of community support lets us know that the applicant would benefit the local community by attending the course! Matching scholarship funds are reserved for those with financial need.
Camp fees cover all accommodation, meals from dinner on the arrival day to breakfast on the departure day, and all of the various dance, music, and song events in the program.
This year, all of our weeks have sliding scale pricing for adults to help make camp financially accessible to more people. The fee you choose will not affect your chance of getting into camp.
How it works:
- The standard camper fee covers program staff pay and travel costs, facility fees, and all of the other costs associated with running this camp week.
- The higher price options allow you to add an additional amount to your registration fee to help make camp more accessible to more people. Thanks for supporting this community!
- If the standard camper fee doesn’t work for you, no worries! Feel free to choose one of the lower price options.
- If the lower price tiers still leave camp out of reach for you, we encourage you to apply for a scholarship and/or work exchange. See our Scholarships page for more details
| Standard Fee | |||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| $900 | $1,065 | $1,230 | $1,395 | $1,560 | $1,725 |
You can find more information about the registration process here.
