With two nights in Southampton, prior to boarding the MS Queen Elizabeth, I wondered if there was anywhere to go dancing on the Saturday night before embarkation. A little bit of detective work (thank you Google), led me to a website listing dances in various areas in the UK. By sheer luck, on that Saturday night  there was a dance party in Eastleigh, about a 20 minute cab ride away from our Southampton hotel.

 

Contacting the organizer by email, I got the directions. The dance would be in the  ballroom upstairs at the Banister Bowling Club. The admission fee plus got us tea or coffee plus a swack of raffle tickets - to be drawn later in the evening.

 

Not wanting to offend anyone, I asked the MC whether it would be alright if I took a couple of  photos and short video clips for my story. I was a little surprised when she promptly addressed the crowd, introduced us as visitors from Vancouver, Canada, and  asked if anyone would mind if I videoed. Being somewhat shy I was momentarily embarrassed at being the centre of attention. But it was actually very nice, as during the course of the evening, numerous people came over to welcome us, generally commenting on how much they loved Vancouver, or had heard how lovely it was and wanted to visit.

 

During the evening, ballroom dances alternated with sequence dances.  Among the sequence dances, there were a few that we were familiar with or had at least danced through a couple of times.  Observing that I had sat out for several of the dances, one gentleman offered to lead me through a sequence that I had never learned. Luckily he was really easy to follow and by the third time around I had the steps memorized.  Of course, writing this up a couple of days later, I can’t even remember which sequence dance it was!

 

 Since I was really keen to get a regular sequence dance group going with our White Rock crowd of dancers, it was really interesting to me to hear how things were organized in this area. Of course  there is a long tradition of sequence dance in the UK - very different to our local dance scene.

 

The dance party was really fun and a lovely start to our dance holiday.

 

Below are two very short sequence clips from the party

 

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