We are excited about our upcoming ceilidh with The Brim Ceilidh Band on 16th May in the lovely Devoran Village Hall. Do come and join us. Everyone welcome!
What people said last time:
“The music was outstanding. The caller was super clear. Loved it!”
“Great crowd, great music and dance choices”
“Really friendly people. Great musicians, clear instructions. The whole event was fun and inclusive”
A bar will be run by volunteers from the Devoran Village Hall Committee and will support the village hall.
The hall has a car park and the village is served by public buses 36, 36A and U1.
A hybrid of Cornwall’s top folk musicians, The Brim Ceilidh Band specialise in providing an upbeat ceilidh / barn dance with an exciting and energetic mix of both new and traditional dances combined with an upbeat and full sound from the band. Check them out at www.brimceilidh.co.uk – accordion, fiddle and bouzouki.
No need to have any idea what ceilidh dancing is, just an enthusiasm to have some fun. Ceilidh dancing is very inclusive, suitable for everyone even those with two left feet. No experience or partner required. Kate Smith will be the caller for the evening and will show you how to do all the dances.
We want to keep our public ceilidhs affordable for everyone so you will see there are different adult tickets prices for those booking in advance. The regular price (£8.50) will cover our costs. The supporter price (£12) allows us to pay the band a modest fee. The budget price (£5) is because we don’t want you to be excluded from dancing if you would struggle to afford the regular price. Please pay as you feel you can afford. Accompanied children age 8 – 16 £3. Under 8s free, but please still book a ticket.
Do book in advance if you can to ensure you can come – there are limited tickets numbers due to venue capacity. Last time, in October, we sold out before the doors opened. If any tickets are left then we’ll have some available on the door at the set price of £12.
I’m sat in a patch of sunlight filtering in through the winter realising that the day has a real spring feel to it. We’ve now had a month of new ceilidh classes around Cornwall already and I’m delighted to say that time has flown by.
Our regular ceilidh classes in Penryn, St Erth, Carharrack and Ladock/Grampound Road are doing well and each group has a positive, friendly atmosphere. Our all-ages class on a Friday has also been fun and I’m happy to say we are achieving our aim of creating a multi-generational class with people from under 10 to over 80.
Thanks Kate! Had a great time and felt really enlivened for the rest of the day,. Exercise and laughter. Can’t get better than that. See you next week. 🙂
Class attendee at St Erth regular ceilidh class, January 2025.
Fancy joining us? We have spaces in all classes and welcome everyone. No experience and partner required. ‘Regular’ classes are for adults and teens welcome too (age 12+ is the recommended age but please get in touch to ask about suitability if not sure). All-ages classes are just that, suitable for all ages.
Ladock and Grampound Road Wednesday regular classes – new venues
In fact, our Ladock class has grown beyond the capacity of the space we were using so we have new venues from next week (12th February 2025) and we will be dancing some weeks at Ladock Community Hall and Grampound Road Village Hall (also called Sir Robert Harvey Memorial Hall). Both of these halls have plentiful space and good floors for dancing, so we will be able to twirl and spin to our hearts’ content.
Check the venue schedule here to be sure you go to the correct hall each week.
Ladock Community Hall
Grampound Road Village Hall
On this note, I would like to heartily thank Woodland Valley Farm near Ladock for supporting the development of these classes throughout January and for providing us with a beautiful converted barn to dance in. If anyone wants a good venue for a party or a special event, including with accommodation we’d recommend Woodland Valley Farm, and we look forward to popping back for a visit later in the year to learn about the exciting Beaver Project and maybe even to dance in the bigger barn once the weather warms up.
The Woodland Valley Romp
To honour our time at Woodland Valley Farm we have created a new dance and our Ladock class have tried and tested it, and given it a name: The Woodland Valley Romp. Our set of 16 people fit beautifully in the space!
8 couple longways set (line facing a line, standing opposite your partner). 32 bar jig or reel.
A part:
First corners (those with nobody standing to their right in each line) meet in the middle of the set (this takes 4 beats), turn each other with both hands (8 beats), and return to place (another 4 beats).
Second corners (those with nobody standing to their left in each line) meeting in the middle of the set (4 beats), turn each other with both bands (8 beats), and return to place (4 beats).
B part:
Stars: Couples 2 and 3, 4 and 5, 6 and 7 make right stars (turn for 8 beats), then left hand stars (8 beats).
Over their heads: The top two couples then stand in a line across the top of the set all facing down the set. Others make sure they are in their original places, lines, standing opposite their partners. The two top couples join hands in their line and raise them into a row of arches, then run over everyone’s heads to the bottom of the set (2 people down the middle, one person either side of the set) – as in Riverside Jig. (8 beats*)
All swing: Everyone swings or spins their partners (8 beats*)
*If you need more time for the ‘over the head’ part then you can use a 40 bar tune and adjust the time for the B part accordingly, or remove the ‘all swing’.
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.
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.
Isn’t it lovely that we are seeing the sun, after what must be six months of rain! I’m so happy I could dance…
Perfect timing really – ceilidh classes start again on Tuesday 23rd April and we’ve got the venue booked fortnightly right through until mid December, with a teeny break in August.
Despite being rather quiet on the website front (dratted illness, but much better now, and joyful busyness with ceilidhs and day-job work), we’ve been having fun with ceilidh classes over the winter-spring term, and have welcomed a lot of new dancers into our community. It has been lovely to see familiar and new faces enjoying themselves on a Tuesday evening.
Here’s an Orcadian Strip the Willow at a recent public ceilidh that I called in Carleen, West Cornwall. The band are The Rosevilles.
If you fancy joining us, or tried it out during the winter but were put off because of the chilly weather, then please do feel very welcome to come back and join us. All our classes can be stand-alone, so there’s no problem if you’ve missed any or not been before. We still meet at Carharrack Social Club and classes are 19:30 – 21:00 fortnightly on Tuesdays.
So, what have classes been like during the dark and rainy winter (and spring too)?
Would you enjoy them?
Firstly, they’ve been good for getting the blood circulating and warming up chilly fingers and toes, and everything in between! We’ve had classes in storms and I was so grateful and delighted that people ventured out through the rain and wind to have a dance – thank you!
As with the first term in the autumn, our first couple of classes were very full in January, with people keen to try out this ceilidh thing, over 40 people each time. Then, as things settled down a bit we’ve had around 24 people at most classes since then (not always the same people, but there are some regulars and often a few people who are just trying it out).
We’ve learned a few ceilidh classics and some less well know dances, as well as few from beyond our shores.
Here are some dances from our classes before Easter. I’d love to know which ones people liked best.
Goathland Square Eight
A square dance, where each couple forms the side of the square, often mixed up with Holmfirth Square or other similar square dances, but quite easily interchangeable and that’s not necessarily bad. This version in the video above is fun – crossing the set with arches like this and grand chains around the circle are fun (alternating right and left hands with other dancers as you move around the set – you go one way, your partner goes the other way, you meet half way and then again where you started out – potentially very civilised, like shaking hands with everyone in the group in turn (haha, maybe not, this is ceilidh, potential for chaos). There are several dances with ‘Square Eight’ in the name, prefixed by different locations, e.g. Cumberland Square Eight, Yorkshire Square Eight. They are usually fun, and square eight just tells you how many people are needed and what shape to start out in. We sometimes like to play around with numbers and shapes though, so everyone can join in.
Country Bumpkin
A relatively modern dance with an interesting variation of a grand chain, the horseshoe grand chain (‘trousers’ – up one leg and down the other!) rather than a circle, written by Mike Barraclough in 1982.
Old Swan Gallop
Any dance where you can gallop and infiltrate other sets is a hit! Here you start in a Sicilian Circle formation – one couple facing another couple in a minor set of 4 dancers within the wider big circle shape. This dance has evolved, as described by Lisa Heywood, but in this form was written by Dave Hunt, adapted from a dance by Roger Watson.
Circle Waltz
Beautiful, graceful and reminiscent of the elegant dances in historical dramas, I love the Circle Waltz. Also, an excellent dance to have a change of tempo and a wee bit of breather between all the jigs and reels.
Riverside Jig
Here’s one where you’ll need a breather afterwards! The Riverside Jig is a popular and easy ceilidh dance, and also fast and furious as the top two couples at the end of each time through the dance rush over the heads of all the other dancers right to the bottom of the hall. The dance is named after the famous Riverside Club in Glasgow which used to hold regular ceilidhs.
Canadian Barndance – to Salsa Celtica
My favourite! Here’s us dancing this spring at our regular Tuesday class in Carharrack. It’s fun to play around with musical genres!
Look good?
Feel most welcome to join us on a Tuesday evening at Carharrack Social Club – more details about classes can be found here.
Ceilidh Cornwall 