From Woody: “Imagine waiting for the dance to start. The caller leaps onto the stage and shouts “Take Hands Four!” or “Square up!” with such enthusiasm and flair that the room becomes electric. There is so much excitement in the caller’s voice. You grab your partner, rush to the floor, form up sets — excited, thrilled, expectant…
That’s what I try to convey when I call – that this dance, this evening with our friends, is the most exciting thing we can do, and that this is the very best place to be in the world.”
This week we will talk about calling for dances. Over the last 25 years I have developed a system for calling that works well for me. This week I will share some of the tips, tricks and techniques that I use for calling. I’ll share how I plan an evening of calling Céilí dances, calling Set dances and calling for both in the same event. If you have any questions, thoughts, tips or tricks please bring them to share.
Solo Irish set dances, not to be confused with Irish set dancing, are solo dances performed to a set tune. Examples are the Blackbird (hornpipe), St. Patrick’s Day (jig) and Job of Journeywork (hornpipe).
Curious about Irish step dance? How are Old-style step dance, sean-nos dance and Irish step dance different? How are they the same?
Christina White joins our tea time talk to talk about Irish step dance and the Oregon Irish Dance Academy a Non-Competitive Irish Dancing school based in Portland, Oregon.
06 Tea Time Talks | Creating a Home Studio 9/30/2020
We built an amazing sprung dance floor at the Stomptown Collective Dance Studio. I could dance for eight hours on that floor and not feel any discomfort. Other floors could cause problems in the first hour. I will go into detail about how we built the floor. Has anyone else experienced building a dance floor? Do you want to build a home or garage studio? We will address all your questions.
05 Tea Time Talks | Costuming for Performance 09.23.2020
Looking for costumes for performing? Costuming ideas for the solo dancer and dance groups. We examine custom made costumes, store bought costumes and creative fixes. Historical costuming, traditional costumes and modern costumes. Do you have any costume ideas to share?
Looking for albums to purchase for your sean-nós dance practice? We examine some of my favorite albums for dance, tricks for practicing, the amazing slower downer, dancing to live music and favorite instruments. What are your favorite albums, instruments and musicians to dance to?
I made a youtube playlist of the artists mentioned in our tea time talk. When ever possible I used a youtube track from one of their albums, if they didn’t have an album on youtube I used a video clip. The playlist is in order of when the artist was mentioned the tea time talk.
Shoes, shoes, shoes! You’ve been asking and here is your answer! This video will provide information on the various types of shoes used for traditional Irish dance, as well as what materials they are made from. This could have been an all day zoom, but alas we only have an hour. We talk about dance shoes. Which shoes do you use for set dancing, sean-nós, old-style step dance and more? What about the best materials: metal taps, wooden taps, neolite, leather, plastic? Who is making wooden taps?
02 Tea Time Talk | Personal Training for the Dancer 09.02.2020
Join us as a local guest personal trainer/boxing coach talks about the importance to strength training for the dancer and injury prevention. He will also explore the boxing and dancing connection. Have you used strength training to improve your dancing? Are you curious?
Last week we started a conversation about dance floors. I kept thinking everyone needs to hear this! So, I invite you all to continue the conversation this Wednesday at 9am. We will record this Tea Time for review later as there are bound to be some nuggets of good information. Many folks have discovered amazing tricks and tools for creating dance floors. I’ll share my experiments, successes and failures. Bring your floor to share, any ideas or just come to listen and learn.
