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Last year, 2008, Betty and I went to the Canadian National Square Dance Convention,
held in London, Ontario, accompanied by two of our dancers. This Convention is held
every other year.
This year, 2009, we went to the Australian National Square Dance Convention
which was held in Leederville,
a suburb of Perth, W. A..They have a Convention every year and this year was the 50th .
Each year the National Convention is held in a different area of the country.
The theme for this one was ‘Gold’ - based on the goldmines of Western Australia! We had a brilliant time.
These Conventions are something to experience.
There is so much fun and friendliness, and, if you are visitors from abroad, everyone wants to know whereabouts in England
you come from, as so many of them have relatives over here. And the same goes for the Canadian and American Conventions.
During one dance I danced with a lady from Sydney who has a brother living not far from us, and at the beginning of
August she came over and while she was visiting him she came and danced at our club evening.
We went primarily to visit relatives who live just outside Perth but visiting them and being able to dance really
made it for us.
Getting to know so many people in different parts of your own country is not unique to Square Dancing.
Other dance forms are similar especially when you go on weekend or week long dancing holidays and meet
other dancers from other clubs. Similarly though, are clubs and organisations with non-dancing interests.
But the one thing about dancing and particularly Square Dancing is that anywhere in the world where there
is Square Dancing you will be able to dance because the commands are the same and they are all given in English.
So you have a choice in that you can dance locally with your own club or expand
and go to Saturday dances/weekends etc on a national level or go international,
bearing in mind it is also easy to go to other parts of Europe where there is plenty of dancing.
A piece of good news is that our national organisation, the British Association of American Square Dance Clubs
(BAASDC) have managed to obtain a grant from the National Lottery/Awards for All.
This is to help start new clubs where possible and to help promote existing clubs.
Some of that will be coming our way which means we can do extra newspaper advertising this year which normally would
have been too expensive an outlay for a small club like ours.
The BAASDC now have a new website. It went live September 08
and it’s called www.uksquaredancing.com
It is a brilliant site and you can find
out all the clubs who are accepting new dancers this year mostly starting in Sept. Plus there is loads of other info.
We are starting NEW DANCERS at 8pm any Tuesday in September at Steventon Village Hall,
OX13 6RR where we dance every week. If you’ve read this far you really ought to try it
All for now
Eric
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last updated - 13th September 2009
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