Dance Card: Country Bumpkin

This is one of my favourite kinds of dance – relatively simple but with an interesting twist on an existing figure. All the figures are ones that I’d class as “easy”, with the exception of the horseshoe chain. For me that’s an excellent combination – usually people can handle a complicated figure much better if …

Dance Card: The Mason and Dixon Line

This dance was written by Roland Higson, whose widow I was lucky enough to meet at a gig once. It was lovely to hear about the background of the dance, which I hope I recall correctly was written for a historical re-enactment group. The dance is called the Mason and Dixon Line because the original …

Dance Card: Balance the Star

This is one of my favourite dances – I love the signature figure where you “balance the star”, and the gateposts figure is satisfying too. In many ways this is actually a pretty straightforward dance – there’s only four moves. However, the gateposts figure can be complicated to explain, as it’s not a move that …

Dance Card: Stoke Golding Country Dance

Go to any Scottish ceilidh and you’ll almost certainly do a strip-the-willow at some point during the evening. Often this move is made into a dance by itself – dancers stand in a longways set for any number of people and when they reach the top of the set they strip-the-willow down to the bottom. …