A Dancers' View

A dancers report of the 48th Australian National Square Dance Convention - Adelaide 2007

Julie and I just love attending the Australian National Conventions and Adelaide 2007 was no exception. We had already booked from the previous National Convention and had ticket numbers 11 & 12 and guess what we did at this convention? You guessed we booked for next year and our ticket numbers are 9 & 10. ItÂ’s like a roller coaster ride and each time we look forward to meeting more new friends and catching up with the fast growing list from previous conventions.

We arrived in Glenelg on the Wednesday with a party of other dancers from WA and the partying started immediately as usual with the candle being burnt at each end day and night! The decorations were adequate to set the mood and there was lots of ingenuity in their design. We loved the yellow wings everywhere. We managed to dance with more of the callers this time so it was great to have them mixing more with the dancers at this convention. We look forward to hearing each of the callers do their own thing and any that arenÂ’t lively enough just make the lively ones seem so much better. Each caller also brings his own style and choreography so you always look forward to experiencing something new and challenging.

It’s great to mix with other dancers and we cant understand the many dancers who insist on clinging to their partners or close friends to dance with ‘all the time’ and go to great lengths to achieve this – they are missing out on so much fun so we just ignore that and carry on enjoying ourselves with as many new dancers as we can meet up with and yes we still save some dances for our close friends over the many available dances and square ups over the whole weekend. We had the pleasure of dancing with many of the dancers from Japan who obviously enjoy their dancing like us and don’t let anything stop them. They were so happy to join in and if they miss heard a call they quickly helped fix up the square and kept dancing with a smile J - a lesson for some of our own aussie dancers who seemed to be trying hard not to crack a smile or seemed to have a permanent ‘blank look’ L …. Common you guys smile and share it with every one! Square dancing is truly friendship set to music and we have great pleasure in sharing our fun and friendship with as many as we can. The dress sets always look great on the floor adding a truly colourful display for all to admire – we didn’t quite have enough for a second set from our club so we had to be happy with one and let our newer dancers experience the fun of dancing in the dress set after the parade.

It was great to have the Police Band for the opening and what an experience to enjoy dancing along with them playing as well. Having the six top callers that called together for the dress sets to dance to was another memorable highlight. Next came some great skits performed by the callers and each year we are always rewarded with many surprises. The closing ceremonies remind us all good things must end but we can still party hard to the finish so we did and for the lucky ones we continued our holiday on to Kangaroo Island for 3 glorious days followed by three relaxing nights on the Murray Princess – wow what a way to discover and enjoy Adelaide!

Thanks again to David & Lyn Armstrong, committee, callers, dancers and many helpers for a magnificent National Convention and we look forward to dancing with you again soon.

Regards

Steve & Julie Longwood -WA