Kontraschock – making music with joy and groove: Dance music from northern Germany. With a passion for digging through old dance music manuscripts, they uncover long-lost treasures and interpret them in their own unique way. Their instrumentation – featuring bagpipes and two fiddles, with harmonies primarily provided by the harp – gives the melodies a distinctive power and color. The musicians themselves are passionate dancers and feel most at home in front of a lively, buzzing dance floor. A main highlight of the band is their workshops on improvised quadrilles and contra dances – which is also where their name comes from. They’ll show you a wide range of possible quadrille figures and explain how these figures can be freely combined into so-called “tours.” This allows each dance square to create its own choreography during the dance itself. Anyone who’s ever improvised a quadrille knows just how much fun that can be!

 

Photo Christoph Kühl