Club Night Monday 3 May 2021

Tutor’s Notes
It was great to see almost 3 full sets at club last night. We started off with another marching warm up. This needs a little perfecting (by the teacher) but hopefully added a little interest.

We then started the night with a dance to recap our ladies chain. The dance was Lonely Sunday devised by Gaye Collin. If you watch the video you will note how, in the ladies chain, the turns on the side are covered.

I then introduced reels of three. We looked at right shoulder reels of three (when the facing people pass each other right shoulder and the third person moves to the right). It is important to curve as in a figure of 8, and for the person in third place to give way to the person from 1st place who passes through the middle first. Here is a demonstration of right shoulder reels of 3 (in strathspey time).

We danced New Year Jig to practice the reels. This is devised by Maureen Robson. Notice how the reels are in parallel and covered.

After that, to relax our brains a little we danced the strathspey Seann Truibhas Willichan – this means William’s Old Trousers. It definitely sounds more interesting in the Gaelic! This video is dated 5 May 2020 and looks like a lock down entertainment.

I then moved up a gear in difficulty and the more experienced dancers looked at two dances from the Ngaio 50th programme. These were the Reverend John Macfarlane, devised by another Wellington dancer, Gary Morris (now retired to the Wairarapa), to commemorate the 150th anniversary of the founding in Wellington (Petone) of New Zealand’s first Scot’s Church, later know as St Andrews, and

Ngaio Gold devised by Melva Waite, current tutor at Ngaio. It wasn’t intentionally a night for Wellington devisors, but the above programme does demonstrate that we have some very clever devisers in the region. I hope you enjoyed the dances.

We will continue looking at reels next week recapping right shoulder reels and introducing mirror reels, which you could swat up on at https://youtu.be/OuWzbkrnyvE.
In mirror reels the men are dancing right shoulder reels and the ladies left shoulder reels, but it is easier to think of the 1st and 3rd couples dancing in and the 2nd couple out and up. People find mirror reels easier as you can help your partner more.