Plans for Capital Caper 2018 are well underway and will be happening this year Oct 26-27, 2018. Steve and Irene Bradt will be back with us this year for 4 teaches and a Saturday night dance. There will be teaches on Friday afternoon, Friday evening, Saturday morning and Saturday afternoon. Saturday, we will also be providing lunch in house at Parkdale and coffee and tea refreshment breaks throughout the weekend.
Our advertising blitz has begun with advertising locally, throughout the province and beyond. Our website is also a large portion of our advertising and promotion of this popular event. You will notice that we once again have a dedicated section on our website dedicated to Capital Caper. You can find useful information of the event there including the registration form and possible hotel options if needed. Want to know more about Steve and Irene? Their biography is also included there.
We have been running Capital Caper for several years now without a price increase. You will notice a slight increase in price for the cost of individual teaches and for the entire package. The entire package still provides a substantial savings. Saturday lunch is still being offered for those who would like it and is included. This modest increase will be helpful for us to continue to provide you with this very entertaining weekend in years to come. We thank you for your understanding.
Not only is this a fun and educational weekend with Steve and Irene, we also have opportunities to see friends we don’t see too often who come to our dance weekend from across the province. If you know of anyone who might be interested in our weekend, please tell them about it! Direct them to our website here for more information! Gavin is now happy to accept registrations and remember your friends! The more, the merrier at Capital Caper Weekend!

This week at Capital Carousels we will be celebrating the holiday of love-Valentine’s Day! We will be having an all dance day on both days with numerous dances we have at Capital Carousels all pertaining to LOVE! Along with dancing, we will be having some special treats at break time. You can bet they will be sweet!! As has been traditional for us for many years, if anyone would like to be wearing something with red in it, it always adds to our atmosphere.
Speaking of atmosphere, a note to our Wednesday dancers, because of an event already scheduled, we will be dancing in Tape Hall for that evening only. The church has asked us to go down the stairs outside of Memorial Hall to reach Tape Hall to avoid disrupting the Ash Wednesday service being held in the church. Our Thursday group will be dancing in our usual location.
Looking at the weather for the coming week, it looks like we will finally be dancing on Wednesday night! Yeah! As you know, we cancelled last week due to weather conditions which a number of you found out about just before heading to the dance. An email had been sent out around 2PM, but unfortunately there was a delay in the email server we use for club communications. Luckily, we realized what had happened later in the afternoon and we believe were able to contact most of you before you left for the dance. We apologize for this unforeseen event and look forward to seeing you this week at Parkdale.
Cupid will be in attendance this week at Capital Carousels where love is in the air! See you then!

Yes, ’tis the season as they say! We have already had 2 snow days thus far in 2018! Our Wednesday group has missed a couple of dances already this year. This is just a note to members of both of our dance days, if the weather looks questionable, please check your email prior to leaving, just to save you some unnecessary travel. Members without email will be contacted by phone. Last Wednesday’s snow squalls came on quickly later in the day and with a wallop! We would rather be safe than sorry and it seems the consensus agreed it was a wise decision to cancel. Looks like we have some snowy days ahead come mid week next week. Let’s cross our fingers, it doesn’t affect us!
Speaking of snow, the Frosty Fling is on this Saturday between 2-4:30PM at St Patrick’s High School. This is a combined square and round dance designed for beginners and is a good opportunity to support and encourage new dancers. Jean Clingin will be on rounds and Wendy VanderMuelen and John Charman will be on squares. If the weather looks questionable, please check the eodance.ca website to check the status of the dance.
From a personal standpoint, a big thank you to Ziggy, Gavin, Mike and Doug for helping with sound equipment duties in my absence. Without them, you would not have had any music to dance to, so THANK YOU!
This coming week at the club, Pat and John will continue working on Carnival-RB4 for our Wednesday dancers. On Thursday, for the next few weeks, you will be working on foxtrot figures in a variety of dances.
Yes, we will be tripping the light fantastic this week at Parkdale….barring any more snow days I mean!

Well for our Wednesday night dancers we had a night off due to freezing rain. Luckily it wasn’t as bad as this or a flashback to 1998, but still mighty slick outside! Better to be safe than sorry! We had some of our members missing from our Thursday group, but everyone seemed to just enjoy getting back in the swing of things with a dance. Next week, we will be starting off our 2018 off to a great start with learning a couple of great dances. Pat has said she has had people ask her about a teach for the phase 4 rumba, Carnival and that is the plan for the next 3 weeks on Wednesday night. This dance is one of the most frequently played dances around and is a Hall of Fame Dance with ICBDA from 2010. Not an average phase 4, but once you learn it, it’ll be a favourite as it is for many. For Thursday, Pat and John will be teaching phase 4 cha called Lady Marmalade. This dance was also a very popular one in the days of Carnival (and perhaps a few years before it). Really fun dance! Great dances for both days! If you want to learn, or need a brush up on either of these dances, please come on out! I know there are videos of Carnival out there, and probably the best is on Glen and Helen’s site with the Rumbles dancing. I’m sure with a little digging, you can probably find a video of Lady Marmalade. We have many sources of dance video sites out there and some are even listed in this website! Please check our Dance Links link above and go to Dance Video Sites. The cuesheets are also already posted on the website for both of these teaches.
Speaking of website posting, the programs are posted for the next two weeks actually, so you’ve got lots of practice time!
We are starting 2018 off on a high note this year with two great teaches! Looking forward to seeing you back on the dance floor!

Hello fellow dancers and welcome to 2018! Our winter dance session starts this coming Wednesday and Thursday and we look forward to seeing everyone! Luckily for us, it seems our cold snap will be giving us a reprieve this week so we can journey out. After all of our festivities over the past month, it’ll be nice to get back into a routine and our favourite form of exercise-DANCING! To get back into things this week after our month away, we will having a full dance only this week at the club. The programs are posted and you will see we have all of the dances we learned in the fall session on the program—just to keep you in practice!

Please remember, this is a new session and you have the opportunity to pay for the full session up front, or pay as you go. Please check out the “Dance Season” link at the top of this page for all the details.

We continue to have members will ongoing cold and flu issues as well as other ailments. We wish everyone continued strength and better health in 2018!

On Friday night, Capital Carousels held its annual “In From The Cold” Christmas Party. As we get ready to break for the holidays, we get a chance to enjoy good times with friends with a great meal and lots of dancing! A favourite pass time of ours! With our potluck dinner, we had lots of food and lots of variety to choose from! Ian and Ann kept things under control in the kitchen and we thank them for keeping things streamlined where the food was concerned. Many of us made more than one trip up to the buffet table! It was delicious, but then we already know what great cooks we have at Capital Carousels. After our meal and social time, we had time to burn off a few of those calories with some dancing. We had a lot of variety of rhythms and something for everyone to dance to. We also had a number of holiday dances to get us wrapped up in the season thanks to Pat’s innovative program! If the songs of the season were not enough, Pat and Jill did a fabulous job on the decorations! You’ve taken Christmas lights to a new level! Thanks for all your hard work! Also thanks to everyone for your help with putting up and taking down tables, kitchen cleanup, floor cleanup, equipment put up and take down. We all make things easier with helping hands.
As we all know at the club, we have had a number of people out with illnesses this past fall, and this current flu/cold strain has really hit a number of us. We missed all of you who could not attend, and we wish everyone a HEALTHY new year!
Support happens in so many ways and dancers are known for their generosity. Parkdale United Church means so much to us as a club, it only makes sense for us to want to give back. With Parkdale’s “In From The Cold” program, we have the opportunity to do just that. With our donations, we help the church to feed needy people in our area on a weekly basis! I have often said this is the time of giving and this is such a special way that we can do that. I am thrilled to tell you that this year, Capital Carousels raised $813.50 for the “In From The Cold” program! THANK YOU SO MUCH FOR YOUR SUPPORT! This amount is more than what we have contributed the past couple of years and $200 more than last year. Thanks so much for your generosity! This party is an event where can celebrate the season with friends, food and dancing. We also have an opportunity to give back! The best of feelings!! Way to go Capital Carousels!
Well our dancing for 2017 is over now at Capital Carousels and we look forward to our new year in 2018! Our Wednesday group will start back on Jan 10 and our Thursday dancers, on Jan 11. More opportunities to dance those dances we’ve just learned, review some others and learn some new ones. Along with the club, there are also some outside dance opportunities available. Just check our Coming Events section.
Have a great holiday season everyone and cheers to a fabulous time on the dance floor in 2018!