News

A reminder that Winchester Shape Note Singing has moved from Thursdays to Tuesdays. Now 2nd and 4th Tuesdays, contact Nigel Bowley at winchestersns@aol.com for more details.

If you prefer contra-style dances, we have our local Solent Contra Dances with Barrie Bullimore calling. They are on the second Wednesday of the month at Shawford Parish Hall: details in the Dance Diary.

Have a look also at The London Barndance Company's website. They run dances with live music at Cecil Sharp House. All the dates and callers/bands are given on the LBC website; the dances can be found on the EFDSS website, which is the easiest way to buy tickets in advance (£17, members £14).

See also the regular contra dances at Egham (Ashford Folk Dance Club). These are afternoon sessions usually on the second Sunday of the month. More details here. These two contra sessions are often on the two days of the same week-end, and sometimes one caller leads both events.

A comparatively new website is now on-line: Friends of English Dance are putting together a directory of dance clubs, callers and bands/musicians to replace the well-established one, now no longer available, of "Set and Turn Single". If you run a dance club, are a caller or part of a band, do consider adding yourself/your club/your band to the site - it will take a while to collect all the information, but if everyone adds their own part it will soon grow.

Also on the site, you can find resources for dancers, callers and musicians, including videos, particularly for those new to English Country Dance, of many of the basic dance figures.

All issues of Solent Waves right back to number one have been scanned in and saved as pdfs. The most recent ones are in full colour, issues a bit further back are in black and white and issues prior to November 2013 are in greyscale as they were printed in blue from black and white originals.

The English Folk Dance and Song Society, EFDSS, has its full programme on-line now. Many song and dance workshops are included. See www.efdss.org. Use their What's on page to find out what is taking place in the coming months and to book tickets. Use their Dance calendar for information about other dance events. This part of the website has taken over some of what used to be the on-line calendar of Set and Turn Single.