Promoting Scottish Country Dancing in Surrey
Internet Resources
There is a wealth of information on Scottish Country Dancing on the internet, useful for everyone from beginners to experienced dancers and teachers. Listed below are some of the most comprehensive.
The Strathspey Server
and
The Scottish Country Dancing Dictionary
These two sites have much in common in that they give instructions in both "crib" format and in diagrams, and links to YouTube videos for a large number of dances. The Strathspey Server has more comprehensive information on the sources and devisers of dances, the music and recordings of it. It also has much the larger dance database with over 19,000 dances currently. The Scottish Country Dancing Dictionary has over 6,000 dances and also has a lot of information about steps and formations. Its dance index is alphabetic and slightly easier to use than the Strathspey Server, which has a search facility that is rather particular about spelling! In most but not all cases the videos included by both websites are the same; the Strathspey Server ranks the standard of dancing in the videos and notes where there are anomalies, whilst the SCD Dictionary gives the sources of the videos.
Scottish Country Dancing Dictionary
Minicrib
Minicrib also has a large library of dance instructions (in its own particular format) which are also reproduced in the two websites described above, but it works somewhat differently. It has to be downloaded from the internet using the link below, and once installed on your computer can be used to generate cribsheets for dances in a format suitable for printing. It is updated several times each year, with new dances added, so if you wish to have the latest version you must download it when the updates appear (you can request to be notified of each update by email.
Minicrib currently has instructions for over 6,900+ dances and 80 formations.
Videos
There is a large and growing number of dance videos on YouTube. Some have been produced specifically for instruction but many are videos of live dancing events, varying from competitions and displays to social events - the latter with a rather wide range of standards, both in dancing and filming!
You can either link to these videos through the Strathspey Server or SCD Dictionary described above, or search for them in YouTube, in which case it is advisable to include "Scottish Dance" along with the dance name as a search term.
The RSCDS has recently embarked on a project to make standardised instruction videos of all the dances in its published books. These will eventually appear on its website under Resources for Dancers.
RSCDS
The RSCDS Website is well worth exploring - it has an enormous amount of interesting and useful information, as well as an on-line shop selling publications, recordings and accessories