EVEN if you have two left feet, you can still dance a highland jig.
Well not quite, but you could definitely give Scottish Country Dance lessons a go, says Island Bay Scottish Country Dance Club President and tutor Elaine Lethbridge.
This week the dance club is offering an introductory course for all ages to give it a go. You don’t need a kilt and you don’t even need to be Scottish.
Lethbridge, who started dancing when she was 12, learnt from her mother. She wasn’t Scottish and neither was her father but her father’s mother was, and every Friday night she was forced to sit through her mother’s lessons while she waited patiently for her father to finish work.
Now, she has been a member of the Club for 34 years and wouldn’t give it up for the world.
“You either enjoy it or you don’t,” she says. “There’s a knack to it. It’s a social thing. Don’t think you’re going to learn it overnight though,” she says.
Lethbridge currently teaches children Scottish dancing to children but says people of all ages enjoy it.
“The oldest is whenever you decide to depart the world. We have Rose who is 95 or 96. You’re only as old as you want to be. It keeps your body going.”
A few years ago Scottish dancing was cool. Its popularity swings all the time, she adds.
“It’s common to meet people with two left legs all the time but you don’t worry about it… the left leg becomes the right leg and you just go over and over it,” she says laughing.
Men don’t have to wear kilts and the only prerequisite for dress is comfort and coolness. Lessons start simple and basic formations or “sets” usually consist of three or four couples. Each man stands opposite his partner with all the men in one line facing a similar line of women.
The dances suit the phrasing of Scottish country dance tunes and are of varying length to suit the melody.
“You mix the sets in four or eight bar slots and that’s the dance. People write dances and there are thousands of dances out there all the time. Some never get known very well and some become favourites.”
Scottish Country Dancing, St Mark’s Parish Hall, Dufferin Street, every Wednesday, 7.30pm – 9.30pm, February 2 – February 23.