Dancing around the World All branches and affiliated groups are invited to send in their news (maximum 200 words) to Caroline Brockbank caroline@ceilidhkids.com
The Freiburg Corona Collection In Spring our SCD group in Freiburg, Germany, had to face the fact that we couldn’t continue in the usual way. After a long period of no dancing at all, we were lucky to change to an open-air venue until the beginning of October – when due to weather and waning daylight we changed back to our regular dancehall. The only thing missing in summer - apart from a proper dance floor - was ‘no-handsgiven’ dances. Following a futile and timeconsuming search we decided to produce our own collection, starting with Kirsten’s Noli Me Tangere. I fiddled with ‘handless’ formations until we had a reasonable choice of dances carrying us through the summer. Members helpfully added their ideas during class, so we changed the dances accordingly. Therefore a big thankyou goes to those members who bore with us during the experimental phase when lots of seemingly inventive and clever formations turned out to be not so inventive after all – let alone clever. We were eventually bold enough to go public with the collection, relying on the professional support of Roland Telle for cribs and Keith Rose for diagrams, and including revisions that pioneers in groups from the USA, Sweden, France and even Uganda had pointed out. All of the of dances comply with social distancing rules and can be downloaded from the Freiburg SCD page:
Plush’ partners in Rome
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www.rscds.org
www.freiburg-scottish-country-dancers. de/freiburgdances/The_Freiburg_Corona_ Collection-final_version.pdf The crib sheets can be accessed from the Breton branch page :
Festival; the highlight of the year for many dancers. Iain MacPhail was due to play. (He also plays 8 tracks on our new CD.)
Jens Heckmann
Dancers have watched classes and musicians from all over the world via social media; good for keeping in touch but can never compare with face to face meetings. We run alternate weekly SCD and Ladies’ step classes, as well as a few children’s classes, and we have fortnightly ‘socials’ with a speaker or topic, questions and chat.
Newcastle upon Tyne and District Branch
We hope we shall be able to dance together again soon, which is really all our members want to do.
scotbreizh.fr/index.php/fr/danses-specialcovid-19/the-freiburg-corona-collection We hope that these dances make some friends out there – but even more we hope that sooner or later this collection will no longer be needed.
The year that never was! Last year everything was cancelled for everyone. However, it was doubly disappointing for Newcastle Branch as we were due to start celebrating our 70th anniversary year at our AGM in May 2020 and would have continued with special events until May 2021. Our Midsummer Supper Dance in June should have been especially ‘special’ with a buffet, a programme relevant to our branch and the launch of a book of new dances with accompanying CD. Marian Anderson’s band were booked to play at the dance (they play 8 tracks on the CD). We shall celebrate this landmark eventually, even if it isn’t until 2022. Unfortunately, many other events had to be cancelled, including our Newcastle
Sheila Trafford
ROIS Dance School in Rome Italy has been badly damaged by the pandemic. Gyms and dance studios have been closed since the end of last October, after a short summer opening. RSCDS Affiliated Group ROIS Dance School, based in Rome, is organizing virtual sessions of Scottish country dancing with Giorgia De Luca, with the aim of keeping alive the bond with its most loyal students. The lessons are organized from month to month, according to the evolution of the pandemic. We have fun choosing dances according to the time of year. For example, we studied Christmas Party Jig in December to celebrate Christmas, and New Year Jig
