Compendium Analect

Published collections of contra dance choreography, prepared for import into Caller’s Compendium.

What this is

Caller’s Compendium starts you with an empty collection. That is the right default — it is your collection — but it means every new caller begins by typing in dances they already know.

This site hosts curated, versioned collections the app can offer as a single import: a published book, a traditional repertoire, a festival programme. You pick one from a list in the app and it arrives whole.

How it works

The app reads a signed manifest from this site listing the available collections, each with a content digest. The manifest carries a detached Ed25519 signature verified against a key pinned inside the app; a manifest that does not verify is refused outright. Adding a collection needs no app release.

Collections are immutable. Corrections are published as a new version under a visible suffix — example-2 supersedes example-1 — so a digest stays valid for good and “I imported this” stays a true statement.

The current app format contains dances and their referenced choreographers. Programs, venues, tags, custom fields and source citations remain outside the v1 boundary. Commentary is published only when its permission declaration explicitly covers every populated field.

What a collection may contain

Choreography, freely: figures, titles, formations, authorship. The U.S. Copyright Office holds that the choreography of a social dance is not itself copyrightable.

Written commentary — teaching notes, histories, dedications — remains the property of its author, and appears here only where explicit permission has been recorded.

Contributing

Proposals are welcome, particularly traditional and public-domain repertoire and works whose authors are glad to see them shared. See CONTRIBUTING.md.

Analect, from the Greek analekta — “things gathered up”: a collection of passages gathered from a larger work.