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Club night Monday 12 June 2023

Tutor’s notes

A good night dancing on Monday. It was great to get two 4 couple sets. This allowed us to all take part in the dance MacDonald of Keppoch which is danced in a square set.
The dance is a Medley, being danced twice in strathspey time and then twice in reel time. It was much easier in strathspey as there is time to think, especially as the balance of speed between the quick and slow times on the recording is not ideal and the reel therefore very fast. Luckily we will have live musicians at our annual dance to sort that out for us.

But first up in the night we danced the more familiar Orpington Caledonians
This has a ladies chain in it, something we have practiced a lot this year and is looking good.

We also repeated Mrs McPherson of Inveran (R).
We focused on the transition between repeats of the dance, moving from the 6 hands around at the end to the Inveran Reels at the beginning of the repeat. Remembering that the couple at the bottom of the set needs to remain alert to dance in and up to join the reel.

We also danced Sugar Candie (S), a favourite of mine. This dance has turn corners and partner followed by reel of three with your corners, left shoulder to 1st corner to begin. It is important that the left hand turn with your partner is wide and then the reel starts with the dancing couple heading out the ends of the sets and then behind their first corner position. This is a very traditional formation but not one we have done much this year.

We then finished the night with a simple dance – Violynne (R) – involving mirror reels and a poussette.

We have now danced half of those off our dance programme in recent weeks and all but one of the less well known ones.
With two more weeks left to practice we will be right by the night. Do try to come along the next couple of weeks so you are more confident with the Annual Dance programme and can relax and enjoy it on the night.

Club night Monday 7 June 2023

Tutor’s notes
On Monday we started looking at dances from our Annual Dance Programme.
Several of the ones I chose to look at are also on Tawa’s programme this coming Saturday.

We started simply to allow our brains as well as our feet to warm up.
The first dance was EH3 7AF named after the post code at RSCDS headquarters Edinburgh. This dance has a promenade which is progressive – the 1st couple returning to top place by end of bar 6 so they can then cast to 2nd place on bars 7&8.

Next up we got a bit more complicated and danced Mrs MacPherson of Inveran.
This dance has Inveran reels in it. In these reels the 1st couple cross to their opposite sides to dance the first half of the reel and then cross back to their own side on bar 5 (from the bottom) to dance the second half of the reel. You can see a video of Inveran Reels here https://youtu.be/NsHEaUqtEj0

We focused our step practice on our strathspey travelling step – looking at keeping the toe low to the ground and ensuring the hop and pull through was smooth.
Andrew then took our two strathspeys for the evening.
They were Oriel Strathspey which we danced earlier in the year for the Pick up 52 initiative and City of Belfast

We also danced The Cranberry Tart – a dance where the first man starts and his partner repeats the same pattern 2 bars behind.

We finished off with The Deil Amang the Tailors (always a good fun dance).

Theme night Monday 29 May 2023

What a great theme night we had on Monday – “All kinds of weather”! It was great to see a good turnout, including a few visitors – and lots of people dressed either for or as all kinds of weather!

Ann took us on an exciting dance journey starting with sunshine and leading us through mist, wind, rain and rainbows! Fabulous live music from Iain Matcham and Jason Morris added to the festive atmosphere, and we finished the night with a delicious supper.