Dundee Weekend
Had another mainly Dundee-based weekend last weekend.
We did Red Hot and Blue in Edinburgh on Friday, the Ceroc party in Dundee on Saturday, and a Focus workshop & Smooth Grooves tea dance on Sunday.
So how was it all?
The weekend started with Red Hot and Blue on Friday. I’d only been once and FH not at all, but we knew it’d be good. Different venue than the one I’d been to before, and apparently the first time it’d been used. It’s not a bad venue – a lot of potential, but a few fairly major flaws…
The floor was a bit rough and sticky in parts, a bit gritty or sandy in other places. As the night progressed though, the two effects seemed to compensate for the other and let to an alright floor to dance on.
The main problems were the separation of the seating area from the dance-floor, the fact you had to cross the dance-floor to get to the bar, and the door that didn’t stay closed. (I understand that they are unlikely to use this particular venue in the future – it was only that their regular room in the same place was already in use.)
All that said, the floor was good enough, and it was otherwise a nice venue. The music was a lovely mix of latin and blues (exactly what it said on the tin.)
I was surprised though at how relatively few people I knew there. Was nice to see and chat with a few people I hadn’t seen in a while though. And despite not knowing so many people, we both found several people to dance with, and enjoyed lots of dances together.
We left shortly after midnight, tired after a long week’s work and a good evening’s dancing.
On Saturday it was the Dundee party in the Bonar Hall. Cooler than previous evenings, making it a really great venue.
In contrast to previous Dundee parties I’ve been at lately, there were relatively few visitors to Dundee. In fact, I only knew of two folks from Glasgow, and none from Edinburgh, Aberdeen or Inverness. One of the Glasgow folks was me, of course, and it’s funny, but the other I actually see more in Dundee than in Glasgow.
It was a really good evening, we had lots of fab dances, and the music was excellent. After a busy day though we were again quite tired, and so again left early-ish.
We had a really great night though. Was good to see so many friends and friendly faces. Looking forward to the next Dundee dance in December….
Sunday was the workshop and tea dance…
It was very early start (compared with typical) at 11am… (The tea dance thus started at 1pm.)
The workshop was primarily about connection and frame. I’d done similar workshops before, though I’m not sure if FH had. Either way, it was good to go over this stuff again. We had fun with connecting through ribbons and cards. Later when working on the frame, we had a useful exercise doing Penguin Walks (turns). I’ve been struggling a bit to do these well, so maybe this will help. It was a good workshop.
The tea dance followed straight on afterwards… It wasn’t especially well attended – especially by the quality of dancer these tea dances normally attract to Stirling. I fear that it’s early time stopped people coming out for it. On a Sunday afternoon, 1pm isn’t even lunchtime for me normally. (I also wonder if the location is too far from Glasgow and Edinburgh to get many visitors from there.)
That said, there were a good few folks we could have fun dances with, and, as ever, fab tunes from Sheena, so we didn’t go home disappointed.
Again, it was good to see some friends there and spend some time with them.
Dundee has lots of great dancers, lots of lovely people, and it’s a really nice place. I look forward to being back there soon. 