Playlists of the MIT Folk Dance Club

For several decades, the MIT Folk Dance Club has kept a record of dances played and taught at all of its sessions (not just Israeli). This page collects the records of the Israeli session, both weekly harkadot and special events.

Each session's playlist—including dances played, dances taught, the name of the programmer, the venue, requests for dances to be taught, etc.—was recorded on a single numbered page of a "Coop Computation Book" from the Harvard Cooperative Society. Each of the following pages represents one such book, including a scan of every page.

• Up to 5 June 1975: No recorded playlists have been located. It's possible that no records were kept.

• 12 June 1975 through 10 May 1978

• 17 May 1978 through 11 February 1981

• 18 February 1981 through 4 January 1984

• 11 January 1984 through 19 November 1986

• 26 November 1986 through 29 November 1989

• 6 December 1989 through 2 December 1992

• 9 December 1992 through 29 November 1995

• 6 December 1995 through 9 September 1998

• 16 September 1998 through 12 September 2001: under construction

• 19 September 2001 through 24 November 2004: under construction

• 1 December 2004 through 2 January 2008: The whereabouts of this book are unknown.

• 9 January 2008 through 20 April 2011

• 27 April 2011 through 2 July 2014: under construction

Here are a few abbreviations used in these playlists:

• RRR: "Record Runner's Request". A request from the Record Runner, the person who looked up dances in the Catalogue, retrieved the appropriate record, put it on the turntable with the correct side up, and put the needle on the correct track. This volunteer was invariably entitled to a request in return for this arduous effort. The title was retained even after the switch to single-dance cassettes, and was (of course) retired upon switching to laptops.

• ET: "Early Teaching". A special teaching session from 7:00 PM to 7:30 PM, before the start of the regular session.

• T; R: "Teach"; "Review". When a dance was taught or reviewed (that is, re-taught the following week) the teacher's name or, more often, initials were recorded. The recorded programmer names give the best hints of the teachers' names.