International Tartan Day

International Tartan Day is July 1.

As things would have it - this fell in line with the first day of our girls school holidays this year.

E's teacher had a fabulous - and slightly crazy idea. They would dress in their kilts (of course) and do random acts of highland throughout the town!

International tartan day is celebrated by the Scots in recognition of the scots defying a ban by the English on wearing tartan.

 First stop ... they interupted a Step class at the local gym!

Showed those fitness fanatics just how much hard work a fling is!

Then another fling outside the local barber shop ...

A chemist ...

Inside the cinema ...

In the main street of town ...

The national bank ...

 And inside a local coffee shop!



The girls then performed a lengthier display at the Senior Citizens morning tea ...

 And the croquet club!

Several other locations were visited including a basketball court, more local stores and the council chambers where a local piper ensured a fantastic audience was gathered!

So much fun and a great way to celebrate highland

Dances to date ...

So - Miss E has been dancing about 18 months ...

I thought it would be interesting to list the dances she has learnt so far - and what she thinks of them ... so we can look back later on.

So ... as of May 2014

Highland Fling - 4 step.
This is becoming much tighter. I do think I will forever be saying KNEES OUT tho! You would think all those years of ballet would have helped!

Sword Dance.
I think this is E's least favourite dance. But it's one of the one's she's been dancing the longest so that is understandable.
Her confidence in not hitting the swords has grown and it is getting much more technically correct

Lilt
She loves the lilt. I think it really suits her. Maybe it's the ballet. She does a really pretty Lilt.

Flora Mcdonald's Fancy (Flora)
Again - she loves it!

Seann Triubhas
One of her newer dances and she has worked so so so much on it. She loves it - especially the intro

Hornpipe
Well - we have only covered the first step or so. I think she is going to really enjoy this one tho - she likes the character dances when she watches them.

Strathspey and reel.
Her teacher says the new dances are always the favourite. Definately the case right now. She is practising it twice as much as her other dances. She should be competing in it in 3 weeks. I am rather nervous.

That's where we are right now! What will another 6 months bring??

Our first dances - the fling and the sword

It amazed me how quickly our little dancers progressed.

Through some stroke of magic I think - Miss Marlene, our teacher, managed to teach them the sword dance and the highland fling at approximately the same time.

It really did amaze me to turn up to the last 15 min of class each week and see what they had learnt.

Miss E seemed to progress quite well. She is a clever girl, and learning the steps is relatively easy to her. What I can see already though - is there is a big difference between learning the steps and being able to do them all in a technically correct way.

The position of the leg, the angle of the feet, the way the hands are held. They are all so important.

Some days it amazed me that we didn't drive the teacher to drink! Getting so many little girls to learn the steps in just the right way.

But she did it.

And we progressed to our first two dances - the sword dance and the highland fling.