My progress so far

To date, my entire life, I've danced very few ceilis. Here they are;
- The 4-hand reel (only the body, and when I was about twelve)
- The Siege of Ennis (but not convinced we did it book-perfect)
- The High-Cauled Cap (only the body and first figure, but I know it very well)
- Trip to the Cottage (and I always mess up the basket thing whether I'm a lady or a gent. See, I don't even know the terminology!)
- Another 8-hand which for the life of me I can't remember

So, not much to build on eh?

Now that I'm the proud owner of the blue book, I can add Walls of Limerick to that list. Never danced it before but thanks to the wonders of YouTube, I know it. And I know the names of the movements, too! Advance and retire, half right and left, dance with opposite, dance around. A tiny milestone, one that any seasoned ceili dancer would scoff at (it is, undoubtedly, the easiest dance ever), but I've got to take encouragement from somewhere. Here it is:



My knowledge of traditional sets was limited - I remember joining in with the babies when my teacher was trying to get them through St Patrick's Day, but I only joined in because I was injured and helpfully, this was about five years ago.

So on Saturday just gone I rearranged some furniture, opened the patio doors, tied up my hair, and settled down with Olive and the gang for an hour. I now know St Patrick's Day! Okay, I haven't done it in shoes yet (kind of don't have any...) but at least it's in there *points to head* and so's the tune. Not to shabby for an hour's work - considering that I'm disgustingly unfit and had to take several sit-down breaks.

That's where I was until today.

Today, I've found a list of all the set dances along with their timing, and the number of bars in the step/set. I didn't know some of them were so short! Pencilling those in for the exam. I've also got an unexplainable desire to put Is the Big Man Within? on my list - it's a dead-cert they'd ask me to dance it, surely?

Also today I found out that the Rakes of Mallow is a similarly piss-easy ceili, so that's on my list for this evening. Right now in fact, once I've posted this.

Finally, my solo dancing and teaching. I have a champ-ish level reel, slip jig and heavy jig. I've got a standard-level light jig and hop jig but these are my own teacher's choreography so I might create my own for the exam using theirs as a base. I have absolutely no set dances anymore - I can remember bits and pieces of my last competition set dance - and no hornpipe. For those of you that don't know, I need 9 complete set dances (with no repetition of steps between them), 4 in jig time, 4 in hornpipe, and a floater which can be either (helloooo, Big Man!) Oh dear.

Rakes-of-Mallow-O'Clock.