Folk Dance Player
For the person who runs the evening
Build tonight's program, play it with teaching stops, and show your dancers what's playing and what's next, with the dance's slide, on a big screen.
You're on Windows. A Windows version is in the works; for now Folk Dance Player runs on Macs.
Free. macOS 12 or later, Apple silicon or Intel.
Apple Music is great at songs. Folk dance evenings are made of dances. Folk Dance Player keeps your Music library and adds the rest.
Drag dances into the order you'll teach and dance them. Add STOP markers where you'll pause to teach. Auto-continue with a countdown carries the evening between them, and a media remote handles play, pause and next. See when the program will end, and save it afterward with what was actually played.
Slow a song down to walk through the figures, without changing its pitch. Stop to re-teach a step and press play to carry on as the same dance. Double-click any song to preview it without disturbing the program.
A borderless, large-type display for a second screen or projector: what was played, what's playing, what's coming up, and each dance's Canva slide or your own image. Slides are saved for use offline, so a dead Wi-Fi hall doesn't stop the show. With no projector, the same view can cover your laptop.
One tune can carry several dances, and one dance can be done to many tunes. Record each dance's country, choreographer, difficulty, notes and PDF, plus who taught it to your group. Search by song, dance, teacher, choreographer or country, and accents don't get in the way: "pasa" finds "Paşa".
Switch on sync and the app reads your Music library directly: songs, tags and playlists stay current as you add music. Or import files, folders or a Library.xml. Nothing you add here (dances, programs, notes, slides) is ever lost.
For years, many folk dance organizers ran their evenings on MITPlayer. It showed how a player for dancing should work: a running order, teaching stops, a display the room can see. Folk Dance Player carries those ideas forward on a current Mac, with a library built around dances, Canva slides, Apple Music sync and a guided tour for new users. Thank you to everyone who built and shared MITPlayer.
A Windows version is in the works. Check back soon.