Fancy dress?

I've been going to classes on Scottish Country Dancing for about a month now, and this weekend I went to my first real country dance ball (as opposed to a ceilidh, which is more informal.) It was in Glasgow, so we all piled onto a hired bus to get there. It was a formal dance, which was initially worrisome as I hadn't brought any dresses...but then I remembered that I live with 11 other women.

I had a bit of confusion with one of the English flatmates, Charly, because I told her that I was going to a fancy dress ball. It turns out that 'fancy dress' over here means halloween-type costumes!

Anyway, the dance was great, though quite a mental workout. Scottish country dances, like contras, are all made out of a fairly small set of 'figures' - little patterns that take 4 or 8 measures to complete. But each dance strings together its own order, and there are thousands of dances. If you're experienced, a ball usually consists of around half 'standards' that everyone knows, and half new ones. If you're me, they're all new.

When we arrived, we were given dance cards, little booklets with a crib for each dance (these are the red & yellow things safety-pinned to the women in a couple of these photos - the men are lucky enough to have dance card-sized sporrans as part of the traditional costume!) If you had a spare minute you could try to learn the next dance, but otherwise all you had to go on was the description announced before the music started. Or, if the dance was especially hard, you might get to walk it through, once, before it began. I managed to get through most of them (especially when the rest of the set was more experienced) though we also managed to 'kill our set' on a few as well!