Nice Work

Contra Dancing

By Alex Chambers

Published February 20, 2026 at 12:00 PM EST

A school gym with people dancing, arms around each other in groups of three — The Bloomington Old Time Music and Dance Group dancing on a Wednesday night, January 2026, as they've done weekly since 1972

The Bloomington Old Time Music and Dance Group has had a weekly contra dance since 1972. It’s a place where people get to know each other by moving their bodies with and around each other in a group. It can be sweaty. You can get lost. But people keep coming back. Alex Chambers talked with a few of the people who were dancing on the night of January 21st, 2026. He followed later up with Kyla Wargel, who had been calling the dances that night.

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Alex Chambers

Alex Chambers runs WFIU’s arts desk, and produces and hosts WFIU’s Inner States, a weekly podcast and radio show about arts, culture, and ideas from southern Indiana and beyond. He’s the co-creator of How to Survive the Future, a podcast about the present, produced in partnership with Indiana Humanities. He has a PhD in American Studies, with a dissertation called Climate Violence and the Poetics of Refuge, and a book of poems called Bindings: A Preparation, about domestic life and empire. In his spare time, he teaches audio storytelling at the IU Media School. When he’s not in the woods gathering sound, you might see him out for a run on the streets of Bloomington.

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