The months are flying by and we are still dancing every week on Zoom.
I am writing this on New Year’s Eve 2020 and looking back at a dancing year different from any other. No trips to Ireland, no folk festivals, and no UK dance weekends. However, we have managed to keep the group together by regular Zoom meetings for both dancing and quizzing.
We were able to meet in small groups in the summer to dance in people’s gardens and in the park. It was quite hard work dancing on the grass, so we chose some of the more relaxed dances to do, and invented a couple of new dances which were more suitable for dancing on grass. It is too cold for dancing outside now, and the grass is too wet and slippery, so we had to stop in the autumn.
For a few weeks in October we were able to meet indoors! We used the Community Centre in Newton Abbot, as it is a large venue, with plenty of air and space. We danced socially distanced variations of the regular dances, and the two new dances, and really enjoyed some normality. Then lock down returned and it all stopped again, and we were back to dancing together in our own homes.
Special events
We have managed to have some special events too. The Halloween ceili in Bristol is always well attended by witches, ghouls, grim reapers and pumpkins and moved on line this year. At the time the Perfect Cure were permitted under the regulations to meet together to play for us, so the band was in Portishead, the caller was in Newton Abbot, and the dancers were all over the South West. The Highly Strung Community Orchestra joined in too, playing along with the tunes in their own homes (muted, of course, because of the internet delay between houses). We all had a good time.
We have also enjoyed two Zoom Christmas ceilis of different styles. For the Bristol ceili the organisers had invited many of the participants to either sing a song, play a tune or read some poetry. These “party pieces” were interspersed with short spells of dancing. The Colyford Christmas ceili was more focused on dancing. We had to use recorded music, as the band were unable to meet, but we had a fun hour of dancing, followed by conversation over a cup of tea and mince pies.
The Newton Abbot New Year’s Eve party is going to be a mixture of quiz and dancing. We have to make the best of what we can do!
All in all, it’s been a very unusual year, but the enthusiasm of the group to keep dancing has meant that we have done what we could to continue meeting and dancing together.
