Category: Dance Instruction

Capital Caper 2019 Wrap Up

Another very successful Capital Caper is in the history books. Unlike previous years there was an easier teach Friday night followed by dancing. We hope everybody liked this new format. The Saturday workshop included a delicious lunch, thanks to our Social Convenors Ziggy and Jenny. A big thank you to all who helped make this a successful event. Thanks also to our dancing friends who traveled from Montreal and Southern Ontario to attend and Steve & Irene for another excellent workshop.

If you want to see videos of Steve and Irene demoing each of the dances they are now on Dropbox. You can get to the videos here.  All of the dances are also featured in hi-resolution video on the “Glen & Helen” site here.  Please note that Glen & Helen’s website requires you log onto it. If you  don’t have authorization please email WebKeeper@capitalcarousels.ca and I’ll arrange to get you authorization.

Less than 2 weeks to Capital Caper!

If you haven’t registered for this excellent dance workshop there’s still time. Dance teaches will be a Ph4 Slow Two Step on Friday afternoon, a Ph3 Rumba Friday evening (followed by a dance), a Ph5 Foxtrot Saturday morning and finally a Ph4 Jive Saturday afternoon. A Ph3-5 dance will take place on Saturday night.
More information is available on this website. Go to “Capital Caper Weekend” in the top menu.
We hope to see you there!

April Update


Well spring is supposed to arrive any day now but I’m not holding my breath!

We are now into our Spring dance session which started Monday April 1st for the 3-5 group and Thurs. April 4th for the 3-4 group. The session will continue for 6 weeks for both groups, dance dates can be found under the “Club Calendar” menu on the website. For the Monday group please note there will be NO dancing on Apr.22 which is Easter Monday.

In other news the flyer and registration form for Capital Caper 2019 is now available. There is a section devoted to Capital Caper 2019 on the website under the “Capital Caper” heading. This years Caper will be held on Oct. 25th & 26th. It would be helpful to the organizers if you could get your completed registration form in as early as possible so they can get an idea on what attendance looks like. Past Capers have been well attended events with top notch instruction from clinicians Steve and Irene Bradt so don’t miss it.

“Swing Into Spring” is fast approaching. It is being held at South Grenville District High School, 1000 Edward Street North, Prescott, Ontario on May 3-5. The round dance program includes instruction at the phase 3 and 4 levels with dancing from easy rounds to phase 3 and 4 with a limited amount of phase 5 dances — as well as an “Introduction to Round Dancing” for those wishing to get started round dancing. The dance flyer can be seen at http://www.eodance.ca/flyers/190503SIS_Flyer.pdf

As always our regular dance programs are available on the club website several days ahead of the actual dance date so you have some time to do your homework on dances if you wish. Remember there are demos of numerous dances on our Dropbox site at https://www.dropbox.com/sh/1cagnq30wix91y3/AAAXgiEtaP7syL7S3sE2MHQOa?dl=0

Enjoy!

Capital Caper 2018 Wrap-up

Another very successful Capital Caper was held this past weekend ( Oct 26 & 27 ).
Four dances were work-shopped by Steve and Irene Bradt; “In Times Like These”, a phase 4+2+2 West Coast Swing; “Life Is A Slow Dance”, a phase 4+2 Waltz; “Emotion”, a phase 5 Bolero and “Nostalgia”, a phase 4+2 Rumba.
Cue sheets for all these dances can be found on the club website’s Cuesheet page and demos of the dances performed by Steve and Irene at the Saturday evening dance are now on Dropbox at the link below.
https://www.dropbox.com/sh/4blylyk5dewqqhj/AACNVd9Wh77C_v9xz0icUEi9a?dl=0

Thanks to all who worked so hard to make this event such a success. A special thanks to the out-of-town dancers who traveled considerable distances to attend and as always Steve and Irene Bradt for their excellent instruction.

Thursday dancers remember there is no dancing this week on Nov 1st.

Remember it’s Halloween this Wednesday night. Please be careful  when you’re trick-or-treating and don’t eat too much candy!

Using YouTube As A Round Dance Resource

Did you know there are numerous Round Dance videos posted on YouTube? Some feature demonstration dances from various major Round Dance events while others feature everyday dancers at their regular club sessions. There are also short teaching videos for particular Round Dance figures.

First it might be helpful to give a brief introduction to YouTube.
Anyone with a free Google account automatically has a YouTube account where they can upload videos and allow them to be viewed publicly. If they have a particular field of interest, like Round Dancing for example, they can also create a “Channel” on YouTube and upload their Round Dance videos to their Channel. To view these videos you don’t need a Google account but if you do have one, you can subscribe to a channel and you’ll be kept up-to date on new uploaded videos. Videos uploaded to a Channel can be organized into “Playlists”which are created by the Channel owner to put videos into groupings with a common theme. A Round Dance Channel might have several Playlists which group videos by their rhythm, choreographer, dance club or demonstration dance couple (Worlocks, Hurds) for example. Many YouTube channels can be searched individually for dance titles. This is in addition to the general YouTube search which searches all YouTube videos and unfortunately often doesn’t do the best job. If you want to try the YouTube general search to look for a particular dance title, try using the following link which I’ve customized to locate Round Dance videos    YouTube Search
The search box will be partially filled waiting for you to enter the title of the dance you are interested in after the word “intitle:”. The dance title doesn’t need to be exact. Sometimes it’s better to use just two or three keywords from the title.  Once you’ve hit return to execute the search take a look at the first few videos displayed and hopefully your dance is listed.
(A note of interest that both our current Wednesday and Thursday teaches, Carnival and Lady Marmalade can be found using this search.)

Now here’s a list of YouTube Round Dance Channels with a short description and a customized link which will take you directly to each one.
Note: To search within a channel for a dance title click on the small grey magnifying glass at the right hand end of the channel menu. (Shown inside the red box below.)

TNT Rounds
Created by Terri & Tim Wilaby who run a phase 2-4 Dance Club in Pensacola, Florida. This channel is an excellent source of high quality demonstration dances performed at the Florida State and National Square & Round Dance Conventions. It contains several well organized Playlists.

Jim Miller This channel has numerous videos from club dances in Pennsylvania with various cuers. A number of dances feature Steve Bradt cuing. (Please note that Mr Miller has combined a few of his other interests on his channel so you may come across videos not related to dancing.)

River City Rounds is a Phase 2 – 5 dance club in St. Louis, Missouri and has videos from club dances.

GB Rounds has videos from some of their club dances.

MrBob2039 has some teach videos of various Foxtrot and West Coast Swing figures. (Please note that Mr Bob has combined a few of his other interests on his channel so you may come across videos not related to dancing.)

Hilton Rounds has a few demo videos, some club dance videos and some basic waltz figure instructional videos.

Ahart Dancing created by Tony & Carolyn Ahart, cuers from Springfield, Missouri has a number of videos taken of club dances.

You’ll notice as you view various videos, YouTube will begin to suggest other dance videos and channels you might be interested in, learning from your viewing history. These suggestions are often helpful and can lead to even more Dance Channels.

I hope you’ll find this article useful and it will assist you in using YouTube as an additional dance resource.

Submitted by Mike Cosham

Take Note!

Originally posted by Donna Stewart March/24/2016 09:15 PM

We all seemed to have come through St. Patrick’s Day unscathed and this week it was back to business and continued work on our workshops on both days. On Wednesday, we continued work on the phase 4 quickstep called “The Truth About Love” and began learning the chasse weave. For the first night of learning that figure, Donna and John were very impressed at how well everyone did! You walked the figure very well and this coming week we will dance it even more to music than this past week. To keep the momentum going and as promised, here are a few notes on the chasse weave:
It is a 4 measure figure which begins in closed position diagonal line and centre, with our lead feet free. To make it easier we have broken it up into 2 parts—First part-turn left and chasse to banjo and step back. Second part-step back-turn left and chasse to banjo and step forward. The figure will end in banjo facing diagonal line and wall-lead feet free. The timing for the figure is S-QQS-S-S-QQS-S. Remember-TRAIN THE BRAIN. Remember the sequence and it’ll take you far. Again, check out the videos of either Boogie Bumper or Almost Like Being In Love for reference. Next week, we will take about 5-10 minutes prior to coffee break to review and dance to music for the chasse weave. That worked well this past week for the running back locks so John and I have decided to try that approach again this week. Great work gang!
We also had a good session on Thursday working on rise and fall in waltz! It was great to see the wave action throughout the dance floor of our dancers putting rise and fall into practice while dancing. You really had some extra sparkle this week gang! Great job! We will continue to work on rise and fall this coming week as we work on Part B and the Ending of “The Girl With The Sun In Her Hair”. The cue sheet is now posted on the website if you would like to download it.
Looking forward to a great week next week everyone! Have a great Easter wherever you may be celebrating!

Lights-Camera…Action!!

Originally posted by Donna Stewart March/06/2016 02:30 PM

This coming fall will be a busy time for Capital Carousels with not only our current Wednesday and Thursday clubs, but also our beginner round dance lessons class and new phase 2-3 club which will be running on Thursday afternoons! We at Capital Carousels are already getting proactive with respect to getting the word out about our new lessons and club through our website and Facebook page, flyers, email broadcasts, word of mouth and soon to come round dance demos at square dance clubs! As another form of advertising, we will be featuring a movie trailer created to boost interest in our upcoming venture!
To create our movie trailer, we will require some still pictures of some HAPPY dancers, and also some video demonstrating some dance rhythms we do of some HAPPY dancers IN ACTION! We want our prospective dancers to see what kind of fun we have dancing and at Capital Carousels, so SMILES AND FUN are a pre-requisite! I may ask some of you for assistance to take your picture or video you dancing a very small portion of a dance for our movie trailer. Your assistance is greatly appreciated and although, I must say you cannot expect royalties from this, you can be sure that your participation may just have tipped the scale in someone deciding to give round dancing a try!!

See you on the set!

Special Event This Spring!

Original Post by Donna Stewart January/25/2016 07:33 PM

Our 2015-2016 dance season will finish on a real high note this year! We are thrilled to announce that JL and Linda Pelton, round dance cuer/instructors and choreographers from Dallas, Texas will be with us, May 11 and 12!! With this special event, JL and Linda will be teaching two dances (one on Wednesday night and one on Thursday morning) which will be open for all of our Capital Carousel dancers on both days. This week, not included in our regular spring session fee, will be offered at a VERY special price of $5/person or $10/couple which will include BOTH DAYS! If you choose to attend just one day, it will be the same cost. Excellent value for an amazing experience! You won’t want to miss out on this great opportunity!
JL and Linda’s story starts when they met at a square dance convention in 2004. They continued to dance together at both square and round dance events, even having a square and round dance reception at their wedding in 2007! JL began cueing in 2008 and their lives continue to grow through their love of round dancing! You can read their full story through this biography link.
We are very pleased that the Peltons’ will be combining some sightseeing and some dance experiences at Capital Carousels while they are here! We will keep you posted through our blog here and our club day announcements for details as they are released. Looking forward to your visit JL and Linda!

UPDATE!!
Thursday, May 12 will be our last day of teaches this season. Typically on our last dance day on Thursday, we have a luncheon afterward. Expecting a higher attendance this last day from both our Wednesday and Thursday dancers, we will be having a potluck at the church immediately following our dance day! What’s not to like? We don’t have far to travel for lunch and we get to sample many excellent dishes brought by our group members. We also get this special time together as a club and with our special guests, JL and Linda. This last week of dancing this season just gets better and better! Stay tuned!