Author: Dorothy McLean
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Lost & Found
Various items were behind in the Dean Hall after the Michaelmas Dance. If you have lost something there, please send me a message!
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Learning to Teach the Waltz
There is an old adage about mastering a skill in medicine: see one, do one, teach one. This is perhaps not wonderfully comforting for patients, and the best dancers in the live version of Mrs McLean’s Waltzing Party are those who practise often. However, the effort of preparing a lesson does fix the concepts or…
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The Michaelmas Dance 2024
Michaelmas Eve was a sunny, dry day in Edinburgh, for which I am most grateful. I began it by washing wine glasses, and I ended it by stacking bags of the used-and-rewashed wine glasses under a table in the sitting room. Then I fell into bed. We were a company of 56, I believe: 47…
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The Drama of Hamilton House
There is Scottish Country Dancing, and then there is ceilidh dancing. Scottish Country Dancing, which derived from 17th century English country dances and older Highland dances, is beautiful and complicated. Quite a lot of thought went into creating English and Scottish country dances, and it takes a lot of thought and practice to do them…
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A conversation about dance
I was on my phone because my silly computer wouldn’t connect me to the requisite interviewing software, and I burst into tears of frustration right beforehand. There are currently two “But St. John Vianney saids” in the comments, which suggests that some critics are not actually watching the video. The conversation addresses this kind of…
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Planning a Dance Party
The purpose of this website is to encourage traditional social dancing among Catholics, in the firm belief that this activity helps build the City of God. Done correctly, dancing encourages chaste friendship between men and women, gives the timid confidence, and breaks the stranglehold of social media, if only for a few hours. Dr. Peter…
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The Empty Building
I do not remember why the notion of ballroom dancing seized my childish fancy. What I do remember is that ballroom dancing was mentioned in the municipal activities catalogue. This was, of course, still printed on soft paper, and listed all the lessons that were available to the taxpaying public for a nominal fee. These…
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Benedict XV & American Catholic charity balls
There is a cheat sheet floating about the internet with a list of pronouncements against dancing attributed to various saints and Councils. These quotes, translations or paraphrases are taken out of context, and they are but rarely linked to primary source material. It is neither scholarly, comprehensive, nor charitable. It looks like something a teenager…
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Not as in wantonness
As I have a look online (and write emails to professors), I come across anecdotes about third and fourth century bishops (Methodius of Olympus, Epiphanies of Salamis, Gregory Theumaturgus, St. Basil the Great) who wrote about joyful Christian dancing with approval, and stories about saints who danced. The dancing saint most cited is St. Teresa…
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The Queen of Ballroom Dances
The waltz as it is taught at Mrs McLean’s Waltzing Party was codified in England in 1927. The English Waltz reached that form after a campaign, immediately after World War I, by dance teachers and other aficionados in England to bring the waltz (or valse) back into fashion. They did this through ballroom dancing competitions…