Club Night Monday 10 May 2021

Tutor’s Notes
On Monday after perfecting our marching warm up, and the simple dance Allemande to Go, we continued to look at reels of three. I am very impressed with how well you are all picking these up.

There are basically only two kinds of reels of three:

  • right shoulder reels of three (when the facing people pass each other right shoulder and the third person moves to the right) or
  • left shoulder reels of three (when the facing people pass left shoulder and the third person moves to the left).

When basic reels are combined you get:

  • parallel reels (when men and ladies both do a right shoulder reel, for example), where you are moving in parallel with your partner (this is as in New Year Jig which we repeated from last week.
  • mirror reels (typically left shoulder on the ladies’ side and right shoulder on the mens’ side), where you will find you are mirroring your partner’s moves (as in Light on the Water, the strathspey we danced)

We practiced our strathspey travelling step, aiming for a smooth pull through from one step to another. If you watch this video you can see that while there is a slight hop as the foot is pulled through to start the next step but both feet stay very close to the floor throughout.

We also practiced travelling in pas de basque and focused on the fact that the back foot is brought through to close in third position in front each time.

We used pas de basque travelling to do petronella turns, remember for these you move to the right diagonally and pull back your right shoulder to turn to place. We danced Tappie Toorie, a 24 bar Reel. Tappie Toorie is old scots for anything which rises to a peak or pinnacle such as a turret, a top-knot of hair, a tassel or pompom on a cap.

Finally we danced The Birks of Invermay and then repeated The Black Swans of Narrabeen (J) – a five couple variation of Wild Geese which even on the second attempt continued to prove positionally challenging.