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Horse’s Mane – a new ceilidh dance

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I enjoy inventing new dances, taking the best of other dances and combining them, or making dances that suit particular audiences. It is quite simple with ceilidh since most tunes are made up of blocks of 8 bars and subdivide into 8 beat sections fitting nicely with a wide range of dance figures, and there are a profusion of tunes that are 32, 40 or 48 bars long, 32 being the most common.

So, we have a new dance to add to our repertoire and it is great for sociable crowds, easy to dance and learn and fun for beginners as well as seasoned ceilidhers. It has been tested out at a wedding ceilidh and with our intermediate class, who agreed it was good fun. Sarelle from our class is to be thanked for the name, more romantic and imaginative than the alternatives of ‘Longways Pat a Cake Polka’ or ‘Pat a Cake Reel’.  The figures reminded her of combing a horse’s mane.

“Pat-a-cake” Photo by Mary Taylor on Pexels.com

This combines elements from some favourite ceilidh dances:

– Pat a Cake polka, an easy and popular Old Tyme dance

– Dhoon Jig, a slightly unusual longways set Scottish Country dance where the two lines dance on opposite directions to start and then partners meet again.

– Virginia Reel, a very common and popular, high-energy, Scottish ceilidh dance with a long history that involves various trips across the Atlantic.

Horse’s Mane

32 bar jig, reel or polka

Longways set for up to 8 couples. The longer the set the more energetic the dancers need to be. We’ve tested this with 4, 5 and 7 couples and all worked well. For less experienced dancers you might choose a shorter set length since they might quite keep up the music otherwise.

A1 (Bars 1 – 8):

Hold hands in lines. Using right feet, tap heel, toe, heel, toe, then take four side steps to the right. So 2 lines diverge since everyone goes to their own right. 8 beats.

Using left feet, tap heel, toe, heel, toe, then take four side steps to the left. This returns you to facing your partner. 8 beats.

A2 (Bars 9 – 16):

Release hands. With your partner play pat-a-cake. Pat-a-cake is a playground game, clap right hands together, left hands together, tap both your hands on your own knees, clap both hands together with your partner. This is 8 beats where you can essentially do any acceptable thing with your partner, so feel free to improvise. 8 beats.

Take your partner in a crossed arm hold (we liked the single forearm hold for a fast spin) and spin with your partner for 8 beats. For those who don’t like fast spinning you might prefer ballroom hold and to polka around (step hop x 4). 8 beats.

B1 (Bars 17 – 24):

Back into your lines. Top couple take both hands together and gallop to the bottom of the set for 8 beats and back for 8 beats. Other dancers clap enthusiastically. 16 beats.

B2 (Bars 24 – 32):

Top couple cast to the bottom of the set and make an arch with two hands. 8 beats.

All people in the lines follow the leader casting down to the bottom following the top dancers. Meet your partner at the bottom of the set below the arch, take inside hands with each other and together go through the arch, then up to the top of the set. Dancers stay in that same order so couple 2 is the new top couple and couple 1 is at the bottom of the set. 16 beats.

Have fun!

Note: If this dance has already been invented by someone else do please let me know it’s name and who first authored it. It is quite possible for multiple people to choreograph the same ceilidh dance, especially using a finite selection of common ceilidh dance figures.

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Ceilidh class notes (5/12/23)

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Our final class before Christmas! How lovely to have met so many friendly people this term, thanks so much for coming along to our ceilidh classes. It has been a real pleasure to see you develop your ceilidh skills and to see all your smiling faces!

So, in our final class we went over a few dances we had done before, and then we learned a couple of new ones:

Nina’s Double Troika

Learning Nina’s Double Troika at our ceilidh classes

Nina Fenner is also a ceilidh caller with The Rosevilles Ceilidh Band and she will be calling a few dances at our Christmas-ish Ceilidh on Friday 8th December so we learned a dance that she created.

Danced in groups of 3, it is a bit unusual in that each figure takes 4 beats rather than the more common 8. So, at times you might have to move fast. It can be danced to jigs and reels. Here are the instructions:

3 people in a circle. Circle left for 4. Then right for 4.

Break the circle into a line with joined hands. You’ll do this a few times in the dance and it is easiest if you keep in the same order in your three, but if you wish to have more of a challenge then you can vary who takes each place in the line by breaking the circle at different point each time through.

The middle person raises their hands. The person on the right hand end of the line dances first, turning anticlockwise towards the middle person and under the nearest arch to them. This takes 4 beats.

The person on the left hand end of the line now does the same through the arch nearest to them. Again, 4 beats.

Reform the circle. Circle left for 4 and right for 4.

Break the circle into a line again as before with joined hands.

The middle person raises their arms again into arches. The person on the right hand end of the line dances first, passing in front of the middle person and through the arch further away from them. The middle person will also need to turn on the spot. Hold hands loosely so you don’t get into a tangle. This move also takes 4 beats and you need to be faster than before.

The person on the left hand end of the line now does the same, passing in front of the middle person and through the arch farthest from them. The middle person turns on the spot. 4 beats.

Back to the start of the dance.

Clopton Bridge (ceilidh style)

Longways set for 4 couples (though we also managed with five couples and an extra pointy star). 32 bar hornpipe or jig as we did. This English ceilidh dance was written by John Chapman and published in 1987.

This was fun, and a gentler introduction to ‘corners’ than our previous attempt at the Reel of the 51st Division! I do like the unusual figure of first corners turning each other in the middle of the dance and then second corners doing this next.

Generally this dance is done to a hornpipe with step-hop footwork (see any video of Clopton Bridge, and below). To be more ceilidh-ish and suitable for events where there are ceilidh beginners we danced this with simple travelling steps and to a jig.

Clearly shows where dancers go, though rather a lot of ‘step-hop’ instructions!

Lisa Heywood describes a variation for advanced dancers where the end couples do rights and lefts around the outside of the set while the middle couples dance right and left hand stars. It is fun, but requires fast movement and for everyone to know what they are doing! Lots more here from Webfeet about extra variations!

Next stop ceilidh! Join us on 8th December!

And new classes start on 9th January – block book in advance here!

Carharrack, ceilidh, classes, community, dance instructions, Uncategorized

Ceilidh class notes (07/11/23)

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So many lovely dances and dancers on the 7th November – thanks so much for joining us! This was class 5 of 7, so two more left before our end of term ceilidh.

Interested in joining us for a Christmas-ish celebration? If so, the cheapest way to buy a ticket is in our classes (21st November and 5th December) – tickets there are £5/adult – it costs a bit more on Eventbrite due to the Eventbrite booking fees, and a bit more again in person on the door, but still a good value night out (£7.50).

Register on Eventbrite

Bring the whole family – accompanied under 16s have free entry (but still book a ticket please so we can estimate numbers).

Holmfirth Square

Like so many ceilidh dances there are variations. Here we have two videos with slightly different starts: either starting by circling left and right, or by advancing into and out of the circle twice. We danced in and out of the circle in class, which is the original version. This dance was written as an English barn dance by Eileen Keys in 1980.

Holmfirth, village in West Yorkshire, photo taken by Richard Harvey

All versions then have one couple go around the circle making an arch over the heads of all the dancers in the set. We added a little flourish in class by going over the first couple, under the arch of the second couple, then over the heads of the third couple. Each couple in the dances has a number allocated to them. 1 = head couple with back to the band, 2 = next couple moving around anti-clockwise, 3 = couple facing the band, 4 = final couple. The first time through the dance couple 1 arch over the other couples, second time couple 2, then couple 3, then couple 4. If the band keep playing listen to the caller – they may mess around with which couple or couples will dance around the circle after everyone has had a turn.

The next step of the Holmfirth Square is the lovely Grand Chain move that I like. It feels like an achievement when you get it right because when it goes wrong it gets into quite a muddle! Key tricks for a Grand Chain: face your partner – if you are now facing anti-clockwise around the circle you will keep going anti-clockwise around the circle, don’t change direction. Likewise for if you are facing clockwise. Next, take right hands with your partner, shake if you like, then (gently) pull them passed you so that you meet the next person travelling around the circle. Repeat with this next person, taking left hands with this person and pulling them passed you, right hands with the next person, left hands with the next etc etc until you return to your partner.

Finish the dance with spinning your partner, then start the dance again.

Starting with in and out of circle (4 steps in, 4 steps out), repeated.
Starting with circle left for 8, circle right for 8.

Virginia Reel

Virigina Reel is a common ceilidh dance in Scotland, and the version taught in class was the one most common in Scotland. There is a little more about it here in our introductory dances page, along with the following video taken at a wedding with The Rosevilles ceilidh band:

Reels of Three

The ‘reel of three’ is a figure common in ceilidh and folk dancing, and is often a figure used in the dance Dashing White Sergeant, which we looked at previously with simpler spinning moves in the class notes for last time.

The reel of three, sometimes called a figure of eight move, involves three dancers in a line making an eight pattern on the floor. It looks like this:

Reel of Three
An interesting exploration of timing and friendly vs hostile moves in a reel of 3! Don’t worry about the Strathspey tempo, we hardly ever dance that slow in ceilidh, but it good for showing the shape of the figure.

Thanks Jackie and Liz for helping explain this move in class.

St. Bernard’s Waltz

Saying that we rarely dance slowly in ceilidh, one rare time that we do is when we dance a waltz. It is good for when everyone is tired after jigs and reels, but sometimes catches dancers out if they expect to be moving a bit faster. St. Bernard’s Waltz, a sequence or old-time dance, is a dance for couples. Many ceilidh bands choose the beautiful tune of Margaret’s Waltz for this dance.

Aly Bain and Peerie Willie Johnston playing Margarets Waltz

The dance goes like this:

Dancing in Dufftown

A waltz at a ceilidh can scare people off a bit, if they don’t have any ballroom dancing experience, but the elegance and simplicity of this dance makes it a lovely rest between higher energy dances. Waltz in a ceilidh context is much simpler than ballroom so if you can’t actually waltz, don’t worry, most of any ceilidh waltz isn’t what ballroom dancers would consider to be waltzing, only the last 4 bars have a 1,2,3 waltz pattern and you can just turn in a circle with four step (beat 1)-hop (beat 2)-pause (beat 3) steps if you are not sure. However, if you’d like to waltz and fit that into the end of the St. Bernard’s Waltz (4 x 1, 2, 3 counts) then here, below, is a good slow-motion video. In this case they call it ‘rotary waltz’ and this is a good way to think of it because you turn as you step:

Looking forward to dancing with you again soon, next class is on Tuesday 21st November!

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Ceilidh class notes (10/10/23)

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The class this week was focussed on setting steps – or pas de basque.

Circassian Circle (non-progressive)

To warm up we danced a Circassian Circle Scottish ceilidh dance, setting to our partners and promenading around the circle. It is an easy dance, one we adapt to add in new figures or steps and it gets us warmed up.

Not to be confused by the Circassian Circle Scottish Country Dance which is entirely different!

How did two dances that appear very different get the same name? Originally the Circassian Circle was a dance of multiple parts – the Scottish Country Dance version was originally part 1, and the ceilidh version was part 2 or 3. The ceilidh version is now the most commonly seen. John & Karen Sweeney’s Contrafusion website discusses this quirk.

So popular – two circles – the caller says “all the posh folk into the inside”! Also, see this version from Edinburgh which is the same as the version we’ve done in class.

Circassian? What is Circassian about the Scottish dance? Not clear! Circassia was a small nation on the northeastern shore of the Black Sea, until 1864, after which time it was conquered and occupied by Russia. Most of the Circassians that survived were exiled and the Circassian diaspora is now spread around the world. Perhaps this explains why there are very similar folk dances in many different countries.

A very similar German dance (Fr̦hlicher Kreis РHappy Circle)

The Reel of the 51st Division

Whereas at last class we danced Strip the Willow, to practice spinning (it is all about spinning), this time we danced the Scottish Country Dance Reel of the 51st Division to practice setting – there is a lot of it in this dance.

The trickiest aspect of this dance is ‘corners’ (see glossary below)- after initially setting to each other (also see the glossary) the active couple casts to the bottom of the set and then moves to face their ‘first corner’, dances with them, then turns to face their ‘second corner’ and repeats the moves of the dance with them. When both the active dancers face their first corners (and then later their second corners) they form a diagonal line of dancers across the set.

Beats 1 – 12:

Beats 13 – 16:

A video makes this clearer:

Here, danced in the Scottish Country Dance style with 6 dancing in a set of 8. See also Robbie Shepherd’s explanation of the dance with annotations over the video.

The dance is most often done in a set of 4 pairs (or couples), but has been adapted for 3 pairs (one version here, and another here – the difference being where the active couple goes at the end of each time of the dance – see ‘dance notes’ on these links).

“In June 1940 after the fall of Dunkirk, over 180,000 British soldiers were left in France – including 10,000 soldiers of the 51st Highland Division captured on the Normandy coast after brutal fighting. Following their forced march to captivity deep within Germany, over the next five years the men plotted to survive and escape. To keep up moral, three officers devised a new Scottish country dance based on the insignia of the St Andrews Cross [the Scottish flag, the Saltire]. The reel quickly spread to other camps, and when the men tried to send details of the dance steps home on Red Cross cards to their families, their German captors were convinced they were trying to communicate in secret code. It was only when the men were released at the end of the war and reunited in Scotland with their wives, mothers, sisters and girlfriends could the whole dance be pieced together.” (BBC “Picture This” documentary description).

Britannia Two Step (progressive)

An easy three-person dance, quick to pick up, and a bit of light relief! Starting on the left foot!

Watch how some sets on each side of the room say ‘hi’ by joining hands at the start of the dance after heel toe and step to the left into the middle of the room, a sweet friendly touch.

Now we’ve master travelling steps, turns and setting, we’ll be all ready for The Dashing White Sergeant in our next class. Looking forward to dancing with you next time.

Glossary

Setting step, or pas de basque – used for dancing on the spot, or for only a small amount of ‘travelling’. To set means to dance a pas de basque in one direction and then the other.

Family tutorial, building up the pas de basque setting steps from walking to full speed.

Corners – In a longways set, to find your corner: your corner dancers are in the line facing you before you start the dance, never in the same line as you. Once positioned between the two lines standing back to back with your partner and facing the ‘other’ line from the one you belong to, your first corner is diagonally to your right and your second corner is diagonally to your left.

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Ceilidh class notes (12/09/23)

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Wow, thank you so much to everyone who came along on the 12th September. It was fantastic to see so many people having fun!

Here are some notes from the class, in case you want any refreshers, or haven’t been along and are wondering what we get up to 🙂

In class one of our autumn term we covered a brief introduction to travelling steps (forwards skip change step and sideways slip step), by way of two set dances – Dhoon Jig and Boston Tea Party – and we danced the Canadian Barn Dance as a reminder of a ceilidh classic that we’d had a go of in workshops during the summer.

Dhoon Jig

The Dhoon Jig (4 couples, but can be more or less; music 32 bar jig; author Jessie Hamilton) is a Scottish country dance more than a classic ceilidh dance, but it is simple and lots of fun, and we think it should become a ceilidh fixture. In terms of moves, it gives you a chance to practice side steps (slip steps), forward travelling steps (skip change steps) – but you can also just relax, have fun and ‘walk’ the steps if you prefer – and casting. The key thing to be able to do in this dance is to be able to differentiate between your right and left!

The Dhoon Jig, devised by Jessie Hamilton, in a book ‘for children’ – but fun for all!

Boston Tea Party

Another longways set dance that we learned was an English ceilidh dance, the Boston Tea Party (5 – but can be more or less; music 32 bar jig or reel, author Jean Butler). This one also gives plenty opportunities to use travelling steps as the top-couple gallop down the set, over the top of both lines and up the set again, casting, plus some fun with arches, dipping and diving!

Boston Tea Party with some optional fancy fun-looking moves after coming through the arch at the end of the dance!

Canadian Barn Dance

This was a bit of a reminder for anyone who has come along to a previous Ceilidh Cornwall workshop or ceilidh evening. We love to do the Canadian Barn Dance to songs! It is a couple dance, danced in a large anti-clockwise round-the room layout. Half the length of most set-dances, it is very quick to learn, a ceilidh classic and one of our favourites.

Canadian Barn Dance with The Rosevilles Ceilidh Band

Looking forward to seeing everyone at more classes in the future.

Glossary

Cast / casting: Usually in longways sets, dancers dance to the outside of the set and move to another position – often to the end of the set farthest from the band, but sometimes to intermediate positions. See the Dhoon Jig video where the top couple casts one place down, meets in the middle of the set between the two lines, dances back up to the top, then casts to the bottom of the set.

Gallop: Couple joins hands and dance with slip steps / side steps usually down the middle of a longways set, as in the Boston Tea Party.

Longways (or longwise) set: two lines of dancers usually arranged down the room (usually the ‘top’ of the set nearest the band/music and the lines running away from the band, but orientation of the set sometimes depends on the shape of the room). Couples face each other, one in each line. Traditionally, when facing the band/music, the line on the left is men and the line on the right is women, but in Ceilidh Cornwall classes we don’t bother so much about this, because all dances can be danced with people of any gender in any position.

A set: a group of people arranged to dance together.

Slip step: A simple side step (step to the side, place feet together, step the side, feet together etc), often used in circling moves, used at the start of The Dhoon Jig and in gallops in the Boston Tea Party.

Slip step (sideways travelling step – here in a circle)

Top couple: The pair of dancers closest to the band/music.

Travelling step (skip change step): A step used to travel forwards rather than sideways. You can also walk these bits, which many people do in ceilidhs – but using this travelling steps makes it feel more ‘dancey’ or flowing. Best demonstrated in this video (complete with classic accordion cord at the start!), rather than using words:

Skip change step (forward travelling step)