[mark12_30]

Hobbit Ceili Dance Thread

This thread is mainly about music and dance. The reason I chose to call it the "Hobbit Ceili thread" is as follows: A ceili is an informal, folksy celtic party, often held in a small crowded house. At a traditional Scottish ceili, everyone brings something to entertain others: a song, a dance, a tune, a poem, a story. On the Walk to Rivendell thread, we were thinking about celebrations, hobbit dancing parties, the Springle Ring, what the Springle Ring might be like, and wondering what we would do to come up with one.

We have dancers of varying ilk. So far we have (at least) Scottish, Irish, and French Canadian. We are looking for folksy, simple (or fairly simple), energetic, fun dance steps to incorporate into the "Barrow-Downs Walk To Rivendell Springle Ring". Since the Shire is patterned after England, one would expect a heavy English influence, and so English Country, Contra, or folk dancing would be an obvious place to start if anyone out there knows these forms.

The idea is to clearly and simply describe dance steps that could be incorporated into The Springle Ring. Keep in mind that the reader may not know your vocabulary at all! Careful descriptions, and (links to) diagrams, photos or video clips should be clear and carefully presented. Please be open to clarifying your input if you recieve such a request!

We are also interested in folksy tunes that sound hobbity. While it is acceptable to list tunes by name, names of tunes are only so much help-- see if you can't find an MP3 or WAV file online, to link to.

Anything besides text should be linked to, and not actually posted on the Downs. Have mercy on the BW's bandwidth budget.

I expect this thread to grow slowly, because the descriptions should be clearly thought through and carefully described or otherwise documented. This project should take some time... but then, we have until the release of ROTK!

So: Dancers, post your descriptions. If I cannot understand them, or someone else with a basic level of dance experience states that they cannot understand them, I will PM you with a request to edit or clarify. But don't be intimidated by that-- the clarification will probably be a team effort, and I am willing to work with dancers on this to produce a quality result. We may end up developing a dancers' glossary: what's a cut, what's a rise and grind, what's a treble, what's a pas de basque, etc.

Let's get those hobbit-feet hopping!

[ June 11, 2003: Message edited by: mark12_30 ]