Category: Instructions
Instructions.
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Learning to teach Lindy
My usual advice to would-be hosts and hostesses is not to teach your guests how to dance yourself. “Delegate” is my watchword. “Delegate, delegate, delegate.” Ideally you do nothing on the day of your event but welcome your guests, ensure that they have a good time, bid them goodbye, and pay the bills. However, we…
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Strip the Willow for Soldiers
There are dances traditionally for women, dances traditionally for men, and dances traditionally danced by both sexes together. Then there is Scottish Highland dancing. “Friday night was always dancing night,” begins George MacDonald Fraser’s unforgettable story “The General Danced at Dawn.” After a long preamble about dancing, the narrator unfolds the story of the inspection…
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A Music Lesson
The more you know, the more you know you don’t know. This great truth was brought home to me while discussing the tempo of waltz music for the Second Annual Michaelmas Dance with my pianist brother. I had sent him weeks before a list of 6 waltzes, and he dutifully practised them according to the…
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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 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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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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How to ask for a dance
Gentlemen tell me that asking a lady for a dance is difficult at first but easier with practice. At Mrs McLean’s Waltzing Party, we are old school, so waltz lessons involve the gentleman asking the lady to dance. Generally he does this by walking up to his chosen (or assigned) lady, holding out his right…