We had a fun night on Monday with a 3 piece live band (Lynne Scott, Mary MacDonald and Ann Goodbehere) filling the hall with their music. There were also a few visitors from Tawa and Lower Hutt clubs which gave a nice boost to our numbers.

Diane finished her 4 weeks teaching us, which everyone seems to have enjoyed. We have certainly covered quite a few formations over the last few weeks, so we are well placed for various upcoming dance programmes. We look forward to seeing Diane again for a couple of weeks in July. Until then Ann will be back and we will be preparing for our theme night on 29 May and annual dance on 1 July.

Tutor’s notes

The Jubilee Jig (J) https://youtu.be/2hut7QDit7M

Reel of 4 practice in strathspey time and in reel time

Betty’s Wedding (M) https://youtu.be/fS0pjPXSA9k

Poussette revision

Thornycroft (R) https://youtu.be/MK6Nl-9o_RI

All-round poussette revision (from week 2) and The Knot revision (from week 3)

The Lammermuir Hills (S) – on Ngaio’s programme on Saturday. https://youtu.be/DiKLJjV7VHI (lots of familiar faces in this video)

Set and Rotate revision

A Capital Jig (J) https://youtu.be/sWIHdHrVREM

Andrew’s Dance https://youtu.be/EYnu-kRi_s4

It was nice to see a good turn out this week, with people keen to get moving to beat the wintery chill. We also had the pleasure of live music with Aileen Logie playing for us – always much more fun to have live music. This was the first of 3 live music nights we have planned with Aileen this year, and we also have Iain Matcham and Jason Morris booked in for our May theme night on 29 May.

Tutor’s notes

We did the following dances and formation practice this week:

Allemande to Go 8x32R https://youtu.be/7l1P_INRMB8

Pivot exercise for the All-round Poussette
Formation practice – All-round Poussette

The Walled Garden 8x32S

Crom Allt 8x32R https://youtu.be/HEWjvHGJtdI

The Laird of Milton’s Daughter 8x32J – Ngaio’s Dance https://youtu.be/RwntgzY9P7I

The Paisley Weavers 3x32S – Ngaio’s Dance https://youtu.be/LuMsIqh2Wuo

Catch the Wind 8x32R https://youtu.be/GeV2hpDsqQg

Club will not be dancing on Easter Monday (10 April).
The next club night is Monday 17 April – see you there.

Happy Easter!

Tutor notes:

We decided to dance on Monday even though it was a public holiday given how close the New Dancers’ Celebration is. As well as revising dances from the programme I also included a couple of dances to mark the Queen Elizabeth II holiday.

I didn’t do any teaching as such but reminded people about formations in the dances particularly circles. Firm arms are needed and elbows should be pointing down to form a W to maintain the circle. In strathspey circles your body should be straight ahead and right leg crossed over for the first step – movement is from the hips. The allemandes were a bit ragged so we will look at these again next week.

Dances we did were:

The Kingston Flyer R NDC Carmen pointed out “King” in this dance

Border Meeting R NDC (Will be a round the room dance but we had to dance it up and down the hall

Holyrood Strathspey (Royal) Revision of corners pass and turn as a bonus

Lady Home’s J NDC Grand Chain and Turn Corners and Partner

Violynne R NDC Mirror reels of 3, poussette

Balmoral Strathspey (Royal) Reels of 4, 3 couple allemande

Mrs MacLeod NDC Set to and turn corners followed by left shoulder reels of 3 on the side

Several of the videos were taken at Wellington dances!

Have a good week. We will cover as many of the remaining dances from the New Dancers’ Celebration programme next week.