Dear Dancers,
Here are some announcements for March:
1) Dance of the Month: Our March dance of the month is Spring Garden, a 4-couple longways dance from Playford’s Dancing Master, 1665-1728. The instructions are here (link). We could not find a video that portrays the interpretation we’ll be dancing.
2) Spring DanceFest, March 12-13: Welcome Spring at our annual DanceFest THIS weekend! We are thrilled to have Brooke Friendly, from Ashland, OR, leading a weekend of dances and workshops at the Shared Visions Retreat Center in Durham. Music will be provided by our own fabulous Mara Shea (fiddle), Joey O’Donnell (viola), Walt Robinson (recorders), Dean Herington (clarinet), and Julie Gorka (piano). Brooke will be sharing new dances from her (and Chris Sackett’s) latest collection of Impropriety dances: Vol. 5. We’ll also dance some old favorites and do a little singing too. So much fun, you don’t want to miss it! Come for individual sessions or the entire weekend.Even if you haven’t already registered, we’ll welcome you at the door. See you there!
If you want to make it a full weekend, Brooke will also be calling the Triangle Country Dancer’s Friday, March 11, contra dance at Carrboro Century Center.
3) Venue Change: Remember that our March 17 dance will be held at the Reality Center (916 Lamond Ave, Durham, NC 27701). To protect their soft wood floor, please wear non-marking shoes to dance in, and also note that food is not allowed in the dance hall.
4) 5th Thursday Special Topic: Join us on March 31 for an evening of “Chestnuts,” led by Pat Petersen. In the early days of Sun Assembly, our dance repertoire, compared to today’s vast resources, was fairly limited. For our fifth Thursday special topic, we’ll revisit dances from our 1980’s programs, dances that don’t get programmed as much as they deserve because we have so many more to choose from (and possibly because some of us may crave novelty, or feel we’ve done them to death!). These dances were, and remain, the foundation of our repertoire. For those who have come to dancing more recently, they may be so old that they’re new!
See you on the dance floor!