All Our Dances

Here is a list of all the dances we have ever done or tried.  We don't do them all now nor do them all regularly. We could never fit them all in!  We often pick a particular tradition to work on during a season. Sometimes they work and sometimes not but there's always next season.

There are dances for beginners while some of our more experienced members like to get their feet round something more difficult.

We are always trying something new while still dancing out with the old favourites.

We practice very hard and sometimes get them right!

Here are the dances and the traditions they come from. Our favourites are marked with a (What else?)

Adderbury 

Beaux of London City

The Black Joke

Bluebells of Scotland

Lads a-Bunchum

Lollipop Man

Postman's Knock

Skirmish (British Grenadiers) 

Sweet Jenny Jones 

The Quaker (To the Bampton Tune)

Badby 

Beaux of London City

Bean Setting     (To the Brackley Tune)

Cuckoo's Nest    (To the Sherborne Tune)

Flowers of Edinburgh

Hopping Down in Kent 

Bampton

Old Tom of Oxford - As a Jig

Bucknell

Queen's Delight

Saturday Night 

Fieldtown 

Balance the Straw

Banks of the Dee 

Bobby & Joan

Dearest Dicky 

Lass of Richmond Hill

Old Molly Oxford (Step-Back)

Old Woman Tossed Up 

Signposts (Shepherd's Hey)

The Rose

Trunkles 

The Valentine 

----------------------------

Nutting Girl           -  As a 2 person Jig                               Back to top of page

Juniper Hill      (Some notes on this tradition)

Bungay Roger

Cottisford Church (To the tune 'Enrico')

Country Gardens   

The Ninety Five

Oyster Girl 

Litchfield

Vandalls

Ring o' Bells

Oddington

Gallant Hussar

Highland Mary

The Old Frog

Princess Royal

Young Collins

Sherborne

How d'ye Do?

Lads a-Bunchun

Moncks' March

Orange in Bloom

----------------------------

Go & Enlist for a Sailor - 1 or 2 person jig 

Upton-upon-Severn

Upton Stick Dance                                                                 Back to top of page

Some Special Dances

These dances we made up for a bit of fun.  We do often dance them out but only when we can carry the extra kit needed!

The Trunch Thruncheon Dance

This is basically Headington Quarry 'Bean Setting' But it has a more arresting theme, as you can see.  Some of the figures are - 'On the beat, stealthily' (Rounds) and 'Up a one way street the right way', 'Up a one way street the wrong way' (Process up and down).  You get the idea!   In the chorus the dancers beat each other over the head with knitted truncheons. At the end they all collapse in a heap.

Trunch is an actual village in Norfolk near North Walsham.  Our old friend  Sid Kipper comes from St. Just-near there.

Ring o' Saucepan Lids

This is Litchfield 'Ring o' Bells' (or was) but done with various saucepan lids instead of sticks. Best not to ask why.  It's much more difficult to clash saucepan lids accurately in time to the music but they make a great noise and also rather fetching warrior princess type bras for our female dancers.

Spaced out Old Taylor

This is just 'Old Taylor' (Ducklington) but one day we were dancing in a very large car park and we looked a bit insignificant with all that space.  It seemed a shame not to take advantage of all the room we had so someone suggested that the dancers each go to the far reaches of the car park and dance the set from there. (I think whoever suggested that was a bit 'spaced out' themselves at the time').  We don't do this very often as it involves very long steps and capers. None of the dancers can dance again for about an hour afterwards! (Unfortunately no picture

                                                                                                                                 Back to top of page         

Our Music & Musicians

Most of the tunes we use are the traditional ones for the dances (as specified in 'The Black Book').  Some of them need reworking because 'The Book' has some tunes in F or Eb and you can't play that on most melodeons. Some of the tunes just get reworked a bit anyway. We don't go barmy if exactly the right notes don't get played.

We have the usual melodeons. They're good & loud and don't usually go out of tune or need tuning up. We've also got musicians who play the fiddle, recorders or whistles, banjo, concertina, french horn, clarinet, darabuka (a north African drum) and of course the scallop shells which make a nice washboardy sound if you scrape them together!

We even dance with just a couple of people singing (particularly 'Postman's Knock'). We know a rude version of the song!

We don't get all these musicians at once all the time but the 'Golden Star Big Band' has been in evidence on many occasions.

Some of our dancers are also quite good musicians or singers and we all like a good old music & singing (& drinking) session after a dance out.

Here are some examples of how it can escalate:-

Back to top of page