past events: 2002-03 (spring)
Vicky League dems | Dunedin Assembly | IVFDF Sheffield | Newcastle University Spring Dance | St Andrews Highland Ball | Refreshers' Ball | Newcastle Festival Competiton and Dance | Glasgow Annual Dance | New Scotland Annual Dance
Victoria League 'dems' 2002-2003
by Yoshimi
The Victoria League ceilidhs or 'Vicky league dems' are ceilidhs run, by the Victoria League charity, for foreign students. At these ceilidhs New Scotland demonstrates country and sometimes Highland dancing, runs the ceilidh (thank you Micahel!) and helps with the ceilidh dances. The ceilidhs run once a month between October and March.
This year, as usual, the ceilidhs were held on Sunday night in the University Chaplaincy Centre. Men in the kilt, ladies in tartan skirt and waistcoat dancing country dances and ceilidh dances, the team was lead by Michael who managed to recruit an impressive number of enthusiastic beginners - again!
Vicky league dems are always a good opportunity for beginners to get
used to demming. As the months progressed this year, more and more beginners
joined the team. This years beginners were really good, and in January,
Posties' Jig was performed by the team of all beginners! Fantastic!!
Last year and this year, New Scotland team sizes for Vicky league, have significantly increased over what they used to be. Did we break the record from last year? Yes, I think we had up to19 dancers!
Dunedin Assembly 2003
by Yoshimi
The Dunedin Assembly (Dunedin's annual ball) was again a successful and posh night, and a good number of New Scotland joined in the fun! It was held in the gorgeous Turmeau Grand Hall at Napier University on 22nd March 2003. The night started with a sherry reception followed by the dancing and a sit down dinner.
The entertaining programme was written by Diane and played by the lively Craigowl band. Dinner was catered by Napier University: lots of delicious foods and the rich chocolate gateau has to be mentioned! Mairi's Wedding to begin second half was good way to digest the food...!?
It was such a excellent night as testified by sore feet and tired legs! The super-energetic partied until the early hours after the dance then went to the dance practice for Dunedin Festival the next morning(!), after which we had a pub lunch to round of the weekend's dancing.
IVFDF Sheffield 2003
by Niall & Heather
The 53rd annual Inter-Varsity Folk Dance Festival (IVFDF) was held in
Sheffield over the weekend of 28th March - 2nd April. A contingent of
around 40-50(?) New Scotland members travelled down by coach along with
dancers from Glasgow, Aberdeen and Dundee. The journey down had all the
usual highlights - singing (fortunately in only in one of the coaches!),
a stop at Washington service station, and, once in Sheffield, frantic
phone calls todetermine (a) where we were; and (b) where the sleeping
venue was.Despite the 6-hour coach journey (or perhaps because of it!),
no sooner had we arrived than we made our way straight to the opening
night ceilidh followed, for the hardier souls amongst us, by partying
at the late night
dancing/music sessions!
Around 40 different workshops took place over the course of the weekend including French Dance, Breton Song, Balkan Folk Dance, Irish Step, Welsh Clog and African Drumming. There was even a balloon modelling workshop! Saturday afternoon saw New Scotland perform a stunning demonstration at the display ceilidh entitled "Who is not drunk" (another dance title made up in the pub - in case you haven't guessed) choreographed for us by Stewart Adams. 30 dancers, both experienced and new, took part in a programme comprising Across The Brandywine, Mrs Stuart Linnell, Southern Stars, Shiftin' Bobbins and finishing on A Canonbie Ceilidh. As always, there were lots of other dance styles to see (and admire) at the dem ceilidh, and as we were on first, we had lots of time afterwards to enjoy the other performances.
After Saturday evening's multiple offerings of English ceilidh, Scottish
country dance, concert (and, for the really hardy, more late night dancing/music
sessions), those who were still alive/awake had more workshops
on the Sunday, followed by the aptly-named "survivors' ceilidh",
before we all piled back on our buses to sleep our way back to Edinburgh.
All in all it was a fantastic weekend. Many thanks to the organisers, and to everyone who came along, took part and helped make it such a great weekend. Roll on IVFDF 2004 in Exeter!
Newcastle University Spring Dance 2003
by Heather
Photos
from the dance
Photos
from the Sunday walk
This year, Newcastle Univeristy Scottish Country Dance Societie's spring dance left its usual venue in Newcastle and moved "up the road" to the Northgate Community Hospital in Morpeth. Not that we were complaining. It was a very nice hall to dance in, and had the added advantage of being about 30 minutes' drive closer to Scotland!
About fifteen New Scotlanders went down for this dance (on February 22nd), and a good time was had by all. The excellent band (Sandy Leggett) playing good tunes, a great programme (including quite a few of our favourites), and a nice buffet supper.
Once again, a vote of thanks goes to Linda for arranging "north of the border" cribs for the benefit of the invading Scots, and a special "thank you" to the Newcastle Uni group's committee who, despite extremely depleted numbers, nevertheless arranged a great dance.
While some of us headed north on the long drive home after the dance, others stayed in Newcastle (again thanks to Linda!), heading home on Sunday via a walk in the Chevitot Hills!
St Andrews Celtic Society Highland Ball 2003
by Sarah
This year the St Andrews Celtic Society Highland Ball was on the 15th February and New Scotland took a mini bus load of dancers up to St Andrews with other New Scotlanders arriving by car. We arrived a bit early, earlier than the piper who was to pipe us into the building- so had pipe music to get chnaged to rather than arriving too!
St. Andrew's put on a varied, interesting and great fun programme for us in the hall memorable for its bouncy floor (go and dance on it and you'll see what I mean). Sandy Nixon played wonderful music and dances ranged from Posties Jig to Midnight Oil. This was the biggest university dance of the year after our own Annual Dance in January and St. Andrews are also the only university that treat us to a proper sit down dinner - with waitress service and everything. All in all, brilliant fun dancing to the wee hours of the morning - rather later than expected in fact.... Many thanks to our bus driver for being so nice about the late finish and not making us rush away before the end!!
The Edinburgh University Refreshers' Ball 2003 (formerly the 'Societies Ball')
by Niall
[We need photos - especially of Joel!!! Does anyone have any?]
The highlight of this year's Refreshers Week (formerly known as SocietiesWeek) was undoubtedly the Refreshers' Ball on Saturday 8th February. Despite having three teams away competing in the Newcastle Festival on the same evening, New Scotland provided a team of dancers to help out at the ceilidh upstairs in Teviot's Debating Hall.
The team, most of whom had only been dancing since October, demonstrated Postie's Jig, Mairi's Wedding and Black Mountain Reel. Margaret gave an informative and entertaining talk on the Feileadh Mor (the original "Great Kilt" worn by highlanders pre-1746), as modelled by Joel, who also revealed what a scotsman wears under his kilt when he performed the now-traditional striptease! The ceilidh proved very popular with students and the hall was packed for most of the evening. Thanks to Margaret for organising everything and marshalling everyone, a great night was had by all.
Newcastle Festival Competition and Dance 2003
by Yoshimi
Photos from the Festival including the winning team!
We won! We won! We won!
As last year, New Scotland entered three teams to Newcastle Festival Competiton 2003, which was held on Saturday 8th February at Emmanuel College, Gateshead. We entered a mixed team, a New Scotland-Dunedin joined ladies and also a joint display team of 8 couples.
We were unplaced in ladies and mixed team. The judges gave us positive comment as well as lots of point that we can work on. She liked some of the Pas de Basque of the mixed team! The Display was a medley of dances, choreographed by Stewart Adam (ex-president of New Scotland) which started with the informal gathering dance Dunedin Festival Dance, and followed on with Airdrie Lassies, The Lea Rig and Lord Mclay's Reel. Despite of chaotic last minutes walk through when disaster seemd to be looming, we won! This si the first time New Scotland have won in the Display section and we were very pleased! The judges commented on how well the dance was choreographed that she liked the way we danced as one team.
After our amazing success we headed to the pub, got lost, cursed the bad directions, tried again, phoned up to get new directions, went back to collect the car-less who had been left stranded at the college (who said New Scotland organisation wasn't good?!) and finally made it to a very nice pub in the middle of no-where where we had a very nice meal (for anyone going there next year youturn lefy at the THIRD set of traffic lights not the first......). Afterward we headed back to teh college for the post-competition dance with lively, fun music b colin Dewar.
The winning team of display gets a slot at evening dance for a re-run of their performance performance. Accompanied by Iain Gent's wonderful accordion, everybody was relaxed and smiling lots. It was the best and most enjoyable performance we've ever done!
Glasgow University Annual Dance 2003
by Marie
Photos of the ball and the balloons!
This year the Glasgow Annual Dance was held on 1st February in Bearsden Burgh Hall, and New Scotland was able to take a full mini-coach (plus an overfloe car load) of people across Glasgow for the event. We were a bit pushed on arrival; however,Glasgow kindly postponed the start of the dance for us (but not quite as much as they thought they might have to before they spotted that the band HAD turned up - they had sneaked in the back door!).
The dance, to Nicol McLaren and the Glencraig Band was fun and friendly, with lots of familiar faces. The programme was excellent and not too strenuous, and the music good. The helium balloons weighted down by chairs/tables/Johann's hair/etc. provided endless fun during the interval for those of us who don't like dancing on a full stomach. For the rest there was lots of very tasty food. All in all, a dance I would thoroughly recommend and we like the new venue!
New Scotland Annual Dance 2003
by Joel
The New Scotland Annual Dance is held every year near the end of January. It is one of the biggest New Scotland events of the year and the biggest dance on the Univeristy dance circuit. This year the dance took place in James Gillespie's High School.
A busy morning was spent by much of the New Scotland committee and helpers in decorating the hall with mountains of greenery (was there any of Rachel's Dad's garden left we wonder?) and daffodils. And from lunchtime the 'last minute walk-through' of (almost) all the dances took place in Teviot for all those who felt they needed a reminder/warm-up!
The evening saw around 130 people in swish evening dresses, and kilts dancing to Gary Donaldson and his band who were on top form! The programme, by Neil and Rachel, was great fun to dance and people had come from as far afield as Aberdeen, York, Cambridge and Oxford! Alasdair and Margaret MC-ed the dance flawlessly - calling a couple of the less well-know dances, and the food co-ordinated by Marie was excellent. The charity raffle also raised a very good £150 which was divided between the Waverley Trust and the Centre for Scottish Culture (charity helping the underprivileged in Russia with links to Edinburgh University).
After the dance had ended with the traditionally energetic Auld Lang
Syne and polka, and following a quick clean-up of the hall, we went back
to Neil and Rachel's flat for some tired and contented partying to end
the night. A great time was had by all!