Dancing 'til Dawn

Wednesday night I went to what has to be one of my favorite random events all year-the New Scotland Disco Ceilidh.  It was the brainchild of a friend of mine, who spent months finding modern(-ish) songs that fit with the steps of traditional ceilidh dances.  There were also several breaks during which I rocked out to music that was popular when I was in middle school, which was awesome.
Here's an example, although the video is really dark.  You can still get an idea of the atmosphere...the dance is called the Arcadian Strip the Willow, which is traditionally the last dance at ceilidhs.  We did it to You Spin Me Round (Like a Record) by Dead or Alive. WIN.


To get into the spirit, I also wore a dress I'd bought randomly while in Luxembourg over break.  It went over significantly better than I was expecting it to.

demonstrating my surf moves to Surfin' USA by the Beach Boys

a post-ceilidh rendition of the macarena

doing a ceilidh dance to Just Dance by Lady Gaga

macarena

heading off Strip the Willow

SO MUCH FUN.  It was the perfect mid-week revision break, but I was sooooo sore for Highland class the next day.  Oh, well.

Back to the books.

Dancing 'til Sundown

I'm trying very hard to balance my revision with breaks, especially active ones.  Last Sunday I took a great break and went to the St Andrews Castle Ceilidh, which was in the ruins of St Andrews Castle.  It was so much fun!  As I've mentioned before, ceilidhs are traditional Scottish dance events, and happen both as stand-alone events and as part of other things, like weddings.  I've learned many of the dances during lessons with New Scotland (the dance group at Edinburgh), and had a great time whirling around with my friends!  It was really tiring though-dance uphill/on grass is hard.

setting up for a dance

waltzing!

more waltzing!

The castle ruins are right on the beach, so there were absolutely gorgeous views when I took a break from dancing.

However, I tried not to take too many breaks, because it got cold as the sun went down.  As usually, I have practically no photographic evidence that I did actually dance, but I stole a picture from facebook for you! I'm pretty sure I'm setting, but it's hard to tell since I can't see my feet. whoops.

From Baa Baa Black Sheep

It was a really beautiful sunset, though.

After it was too dark to dance, the ceilidh-goers walked a torchlight procession down to the pier.  It was really lovely, and a perfect way to see out May Day.  I love torches.

sorry about the blurriness :(

It was a wonderful night, full of great people and dancing...and tartan!

Just Some Thoughts (another sick day...)

So, I'm sick again (grumble grumble).  I'm pretty sure I've managed to catch every nasty cold most British kids get the whole time they're in primary school.  Eventually my immune system has to catch up...sigh.  But in the meantime, I've actually been really productive in getting homework done, and after a week I am finally feeling a lot better.
Last night I went to my friend's 21st birthday party, which was Sex and the City themed and a lot of fun.  Here we are with her big balloons:

The thing that makes her party blog-worthy (aside from how great it was), though, is the fact that just for her birthday, just because she wanted to, she had a ceilidh (traditional Scottish dance).  Since so many of her friends are part of New Scotland and/or Scottish, we were able to just go for it.  A few of the dances were taught, but for the most part such a large percentage of the group knew the steps that they were able to just drag the few people who didn't through them.  It was pretty awesome, and something I wish I could do at home.  Unfortunately, I haven't quite trained my friends that well...yet.

Other than that, there isn't much to report.  Lots of homework (only 4 weeks left of semester 2 classes! aahh!) and getting over the plague...again.  I made chicken soup from scratch today, almost the way my mom makes it-I can't get the stuff to make matzo balls here.  It did get me thinking about how magical chicken soup is, though, which reminded me of a great book I read as a kid: Stone Soup.
It's an old folk tale, and there are lots of versions of it, but the basic story is that there is a village somewhere that is having a famine.  People have food in their homes, but no one really has enough to eat.  Then a man comes to town with a cast iron pot, and offers to make stone soup to share with the village.  He fills the pot with water and drops in a plain old stone.  As it boils he says "you know what would make this soup even better? cabbage! oh, well..." and lo and behold, one of the villagers offers a cabbage they were hiding under the bed.  This continues until all of the village families have offered something, and together everyone's meager offerings have created a wonderful, delicious soup!

Maybe my first graders can try reading it.  Soup is great stuff, and teamwork is even better.  My flatmate and I have been studying hard all week, and we're sharing my soup for dinner tonight :)

The Sequel

In October I went along on New Scotland's "Fresher's Weekend" retreat and had a blast.  It was so much fun that some of my friends/the committee members decided it would be a good idea to do it again in second semester.  This time we went to Melrose, another historic Scottish town, and again I got very little sleep...but it was such a blast!  We spent Friday night and all day/night Saturday dancing, then went back to the hostel for a jam session with whatever flutes/accordions/guitars were around and singing.  I was really amazed to realize how far I've come as a dancer since October-at the first weekend I could barely get through "Mairi's Wedding" (one of my favorite dances now) and this time I could do the whole thing without it being called and didn't mess up once!  I don't have a ton to say about the weekend, except that it was a great couple of days away with a bunch of other crazy dance kids.  Pictures!

sculpting the fondant

 The theme for the weekend was Harry Potter, and it was also one of the girls' birthday.  I was asked to make a surprise birthday cake for her in the theme for Friday night.  I decided to do a Hogwarts crest, and I was really pleased with the way it turned out!

the Hufflepuff badger

 The cake was red velvet with cream cheese frosting, covered in fondant.  All of the house mascots were also sculpted out of fondant, which was a lot of fun to do!

the Gryffindor lion

the finished cake

Sanne really liked it, and it was a lot of fun to present during the dance.  I was really proud of myself--and I got to eat red velvet cake, which I love and you can't really get in Scotland.

During the day on Saturday were classes, some normal Scottish dance classes and workshops by society members who also do other dance forms.  I took Cuban Salsa and Lindy Hop, and taught a vintage dance class! I was really excited and nervous, but a ton of people came and they seemed to have a great time.  I taught 1860s waltz and used the time to talk about some of the issues that I see on the dance floor a lot, both at home and at ceilidhs here: leading well and steering.  I hope the lesson sticks!  Being crashed into walls is no fun.
On Saturday night there was a "fancy dress" (aka costume) dance, which shamefully I didn't put much effort into.  I went as a Slytherin, and wore a basic schoolgirl-looking thing.  I have a bunch of HP costumes, but they're all in the States. sigh. oh, well.  Some people got really into it, and the costumes were pretty cool even if they weren't very elaborate:

two of my friends as the golden snitch and Fleur Delacour

another friend as Professor Umbridge (he stayed in character all night too, which was hilarious)

 Today (Sunday) we went to Melrose Abbey, the ruins of a twelfth century abbey which was also the site of a Roman fort under governor Agricola.

 It was really cold (it was also snowing a bit), but the abbey and grounds were beautiful.  It was fun to walk around with my friends and explore the site and the museum that's also on the grounds.

 I want to write a post solely on the abbey, so I'll have more to say about it and more pictures of the structure later.  Afterwards, we went to the only place open in town (Melrose is very small-there was one line of shops and that was the whole town center)--a tea shop down the street from the abbey.  We spent the rest of the afternoon having tea and cake and chatting, as usual :)  I'm exhausted, but it was well worth it.  Yay dancing!

My First Ball at Which There is More Than One Accordion in the Band

Last night I went to the New Scotland Annual Dance, which was my first big formal event.  It was really daunting at first, because none of the dances were really taught on the floor the way I'm used to-instead, they would be called through once slowly enough that it could be walked quickly by the top couple, and then recapped.  The figures also weren't called during the dancing.
I made it through just fine, though!  I messed up, but everybody in the set worked together to make it through.  Here's a video of Yan Tan Tethera, one of the dances on the program:



While it was definitely a little stressful to learn dances on the fly that way, it was also really cool to get through them without a caller.  It was especially fun knowing that it would have been similarly done at 19th century balls, even though we do it rarely at vintage dance events.

A Quest to De-stress

This morning I finished my exams! Cue my massive sigh of relief and pleasure.  Tomorrow I need to do practical things like clean my room, organize this semester's academic ruffage, go to the library, and go to work.  Today, though, I am taking some time to de-stress and work on a project I've been thinking about for a while but haven't been able to investigate.
That subject is my next (some day very far off) sewing project.  Last summer I started playing with the idea of making a new 1860s ball gown.  The dress I have now is very special to me, and was made by the lovely Katy Bishop from shot silk.  Shot silk is woven from two colors, so it looks different from different angles/in different light-mine is blue and green.

on the carousel at the Rotunda Ballroom in Newport, RI in 2008 

Being in Scotland has really inspired me to do something with tartan.  One of the things I learned in my Scottish history class this semester was that the whole tartan/clan connection became a much larger phenomenon thanks to royal interest during the early nineteenth century, and became an fashion craze during the mid-century after Queen Victoria and Prince Albert purchased Balmoral Castle in the 1840s.  Queen Victoria seems to have been a great fan of tartan herself-check out all the tartan in the Balmoral drawing room:

you can see more pictures at Victoria's World

So knowing that much, I had a feeling I could find evidence of tartan in ladies' evening wear from the 1860s.  It turned out to be a little harder that I was expecting, but after some serious digging today I have choices!!  As I mentioned, Victoria liked tartan, and I found this great portrait of her in a cream dress and tartan sash from the 1850s.

 So that's option number one.  I don't know what tartan she's wearing (so I don't know what tartan it is), but based on some of the research I've been doing and the light areas I'd guess it's the Stewart Dress tartan, which looks like this:

or rather, this is what it looks like in wool, which is not what I'd make a dress out of.  Because tartan is woven, if I want real tartan I have to use woven fabric, which means any tartan on my dress will have to be silk.
Anyways, I kept looking.  I found an auction site with listings for pieces from the wardrobe of Queen Alexandra, which were being auctioned for charity in 1937.  One of the dresses was tartan! And better yet, not hideous!

This is the original auction description:
"27
SCOTTISH TARTAN AND WHITE SATIN CRINOLINE BALL DRESSPlaid satin panniers in the Royal Stuart tartan over a separate skirt of white satin ruffles outlined in red, with internal stiffening. Pointed bodice with pleated bertha trimmed with black lace, and short white tulle sleeves. With belt and separate collar. Worn at the Scottish Balls at Balmoral when H. M. the Queen first came to England"


However, this dress is later than the period I'm aiming for (mid-nineteenth century).  So I started looking for other pictures from balls at Balmoral castle.  In 1863, the Princess of Wales wore this dress to the annual ball:

It looks very similar to the previous one.  My guess is that one was a copy of this dress (done without the hoops), and that both are Stewart tartans, since the auction listing says that tartan is the Royal Stewart, and the white on this one makes me think it's the Dress Stewart.  
I don't love the underskirt on this one-it's too fussy for me, and I think the red trim would be a little too much with a bright tartan.  However, I'm very pleased with the overall style of the dress.  I think I would prefer to make something similar to this, rather than a plain dress with a sash in tartan, but we'll see.  I've found a great source for silk tartan, and scans of 19th century tartan sample books so I can cross-reference patterns for historical accuracy.  I'd like to do a cream/gold underskirt to bring out the yellow in the tartan; if I use a different tartan I'll use one with yellow highlights.  


Off to celebrate the end of exams at dance tonight!  I'll keep my eye out for any tartans I like. 

Dancing and other Shenanigans

Last night I went to my very first (Scottish) ball, which had a very different dress code then nineteenth century balls at home.  I had a blast-learned some new dances, got to try dancing some of the ones I've been practicing in classes, and hung out with some wonderful and hilarious people.  Best of all, while there was a wide age range, in general the average age was early twenties.  There are very few dance events at home right now where this is the case-vintage dance isn't a part of the culture for uni kids the way it is here.  Also, I got to do Mairi's Wedding, which is at this point my favorite dance.
Here are some pictures from the EUNSCDS Beginners' Dance, plus a few other pictures from classes and general social time :)

At Chocolate Soup, which is a favorite for cold days

At Thursday classes.  We ran out of chairs...

In the process of acquiring the above picture, I gave the camera to Emma...

...who proceeded to play with it.

Obviously, we all dressed up a bit more for the ball.  Someone (I can't remember who) made the comment last week that "dance is a contact sport," and I really like that.  Which is why we're all shiny in these pictures. And why a few of them have kind of an ethereal glow.  While I would like to just say we're that angelic, it was actually so hot in the hall we fogged the lens!

Socializing during the raffle.  I just wanted to demonstrate the amount of tartan present.

some of my friends-I took a bunch during intermission so that I would have some pictures to post, since I was too busy dancing the rest of the night!

forming sets for a dance, with the band at the top

My dance card! Which was really more of a book: in addition to listing the order of dances, it also had four pages with all the dances written out so we could cram in between!

This is a little unrelated, but I'd been hearing about it from some of the experienced dancers.  A few years ago they did a performance piece to a Sound of Music medley...and I found it on youtube!  It's actually really neat: