On Saturday 28th September the RSCDS held a Scottish/Ceilidh dance in Mumbles, Swansea. This year, instead of the usual Festival of Dance in June, we chose to hold an event at Oystermouth Castle. Due to the weather, we had to rely on the nearby Ostreme Centre as our backup. The Ostreme Centre is a nice sized venue with a good wooden sprung dance floor and proved most suitable for dancing.
Mumbles is always busy on a Saturday and it was hoped people seeing our dancing would be tempted to give it a go. Attracting new dancers was our main target with this event and dances were chosen for their simplicity, Scottish and Ceilidh dances.
The event was scheduled for a 2:00pm start and we waited to see what would happen. At first it looked like we would not have many visitors but around 2:15 they started to arrive and soon we had four dance sets up on the floor. People seemed to come in stay for around 40-60 minutes and then leave, being replaced by new arrivals. It was hard to count how many (non dancers) came in to the hall but I would estimate 50+ over the course of the afternoon.
The calling for the dances was done by Heather Davies and Pat Rye and halfway though the event we took a break to enjoy our picnics and sat back to watch an entertaining dance display from Sweyns Ey Morris.