Tutor’s Notes
This week we quickly recapped on promenades and moved onto Allemandes.
Allemandes are a progressive formation which can be danced by 2 or 3 couples.
The Allemande hold is similar to the promenade but the man then lifts his right hand to behind his partners shoulders. He then guides his partner with the left hand and never treats her as a public leaning post.

You can see some useful vidoes of allemandes below.
2 couple allemande:

3 couple allemande:

Dances we did with promenade and allemandes were:

It Should be Fun (Jig with 3 couple Promenade)
The Findlay’s Jig (Jig with 3 couple Allemande)
Lady Catherine Bruce’s Reel (Jig with 2 couple Allemande)
The Cabrach (Strathspey, 3 couple Allemande)

We also had a look at the setting step used for quick time dances (i.e. Jigs and Reels) This step is called
Pas de Basque. We practiced this to reel time music which has 3 even beats. It was great to see that our newer dancers were able to quickly get the rhythm of this step, often this is tricky for some.
We then danced Espie McNabb using this step. This dance has set and cross, and set and cast in it.

For those dancers that have been dancing a bit longer we danced two more challenging dancers.
Minister on the Loch (Strathspey)

Mairi’s Wedding (Reel)