Family Ceilidh – Hyndland Parish Hall – 21 February 2015

Virginia Reel to car wash and Strip the Willow to Born Slippy: this is a ceilidh like no other!

After our fabulous Burns Night Ceilidh at the new venue of St Silas church we are back at Hyndland Community Hall for our February 21 Disco Ceilidh.

Bring your own Drinks and nibbles. Bring your friends, bring your kids!

We run 630pm to 930pm.

£5 adults £2 kids (under 5s free) in advance from ticket source
or £6 adults £2.50 children on the door
Directions to at Silas church
Directions to Hyndland Community Hall

20140906-113925-41965699.jpg

Burns Family Ceilidh 24 January 2015

It’s peak ceilidh season and we’ll be celebrating the Bard with a stoating night of ceilidh dancing.

Sooooooo…… Don your tartan, bring your weans, pack the Haggis flavour crisps and a hip flask and get into the Burns Night groove.

Hosted by Disco Ceilidh and with special guests The Broomhill Ceilidh Band, we’ll be starting out with all the traditional jugs and reels and finish up with a Disco Ceilidh Inferno.
IMG_8598-0.JPG
Bring your own drinks and fav snacks. We’ll have home baking, and some snacks and soft drinks on sale.

All money raised to RSPB Scotland
Tickets in advance from ticketsource £7 adults £3 kids or on the door (£7.50/£3.50) Under 5s Free.

Yay! Burns Night! And if you have a Burns poems or song you want to share, we’ll have an open mic at half time.

Bring your friends too – here’s the link to the Facebook event if you want to share it!

Saturday 24 January 2014
630pm-930pm
St Silas Church, 69 Park Road, Glasgow, G4 9LE
IMG_7267-0.JPG

Green Afro Wigs and Deely-Bopper Ceilidhing to the Pogues

20140318-075118.jpg
I’m just back from the St Patrick’s Disco ceilidh with the songs of the Pogues still ringing in my ears.

I had the idea about doing a whole Disco Ceilidh to the music of Irish Bands but had a bit of trouble finding the right songs. By nature Disco Ceilidh is a bit cheesy, a bit camp, and doesn’t really take itself too seriously. So you can probably imagine that its hard to fit U2 into the genre. In the end the Pogues featured large in the playlist (inevitably). I had great hopes for C’est La Vie by B*witched, but it’s not quite right, and I couldn’t face Westlife.

A big hit was Sally MacLennane for the Millitary two-step and Streets of London for the Flying Scotsman. But it was YMCA, Get lucky and Gangnam Style that really got the dance floor going. The folks who came complete with green Afro wig, green deely-boppers and other St Patrick’s accoutrements really made my day.

One of the guys propping up the bar had an excuse I’d never heard before for not dancing. ‘I actually really like dancing’ he said, ‘but I went to the gym for the first time in years yesterday and now I can’t lift my arms higher than this’ he said waving his hands about at hip-level. ‘It would be pure agony for me on the dance floor’.

Steampunk Bar and Grill was a great venue for a disco ceilidh and I think we’ll definitely be back there so watch this space.

As usual I was too busy with the calling to take any photos. Next week I’ve got a 40th birthday party to do and I’ll do my best to get some photos to post on the blog.

Lá fhéile Pádraig sona dhuit!

Disco Ceilidh at St Silas International Cafe – Wednesday 12th March

Are you an international student and want to experience some ceilidh culture? Disco Ceilidh will be at the St Silas International Cafe on 12th March. This event is for international students, but any ceilidh experts are also welcome to help out the beginners!

Come and learn some traditional Scottish Ceilidh Dances with a twist.  We’ll be dancing to traditional music and Disco and pop tunes. No experience needed, Beginners welcome.

There will be tea, coffee and cake and we’ll start off at 730pm

 St Silas Church Hall, Park Road, G4 9JE

Wednesday 12 March   7.30-9.30pm

 Free entry


Image

Wiggling at WEST

gay gordons cropped

Friday night we were at the amazing venue of WEST brewery for a Disco Ceilidh. It was great to see loads of folk turn out in their tartan to shoogle their bahookies.

There was a great atmosphere and extra folk kept piling onto the dance floor even as each dance was on the go. This made for a happy bedlam with sets of dancers growing as the song progressed which made for an interesting Flying Scotsman which started with the usual four carriages and ended with nine.

There seemed to be an awful lot of WEST’s famous 2-pint beer glasses around which presumably was why, towards the end of the night, there was some rather groovy ad-libbing on the dance floor as disco-ceilidh went freestyle.

The audience was great and weren’t the type to want a sit-down between dances so at the end of the night we did a back-to-back medley of Strip the Willow to ‘Born Slippy’, Circassian Circle to ‘Get Lucky’, Military Two-Step to ‘Born this Way’ and then, in a departure from my planned set, a rather experimental Gay Gordons to YMCA.

I’d had a hunch that the Village People and the Gay Gordons would be a good mix, though I hadn’t tried it before, and with such a fantastic group of dancers and the heroic quantities of WEST’s beer that was being consumed, I felt it was the right time to try.

disco ceilidh west circassian circle cr

It worked a treat with dancers breaking out at intervals for the actions. It was brilliant fun, hugely cheesy and my only regret is that the various phones and cameras had all run out of battery/memory so I couldn’t record it on video for posterity.

Watch out for it at the next Disco ceilidh.

A few comments from the feedback forms:

‘Do it more, for longer and more often!’

‘Come and do Disco Ceilidh at our wedding!’

‘Unique, energetic, fun selection of music’

‘More Abba!’

What did you like best?
‘It’s a DISCO CEILIDH!!’

Was there anything you didn’t enjoy?
‘When there was a break/the end’

I think the world is ready for Disco Ceilidh

First published at cuilbay.com 21st Aug 2013

‘ve been spending a few spare moments recently puzzling out what disco tunes would go with which ceilidh dances. It must be one of the things that you can’t find on the internet (I did try) so you’ll be pleased to know that I am adding to that fabulous open source project by documenting my findings here ….

In choosing these tunes I have considered tempo, how the pattern of the dance matches the tune, and boogie-value.

These have not been definitively tested yet so bear with me, I’ll update once I have rounded up some experimental dancers ….

Gay Gordons
American Boy – Estelle 118 bpm

Dashing White Sergeant

Disco Inferno – The Trammps 128 bpm
<a

Canadian Barndance
Dancing in the Moonlight – Toploader 124 bpm

Circassian Circle
Up all night to get lucky – Daft Punk 130 bpm?
Works especially well with a bit of a disco conga instead of the promenade.

St Bernard’s Waltz
The times are changing – Simon and Garfunkle

Virginia Reel
Car wash – Rose Royce but think I’ll go with the Christina Aguillera version from Shark Tale

Strip the Willow
I am convinced that Born Slippy (140-145bpm) – by Underworld will make a fabulous Strip the Willow but I will need to try it out with a full set of dancers to see how it works ….

The background to this eccentric exercise is that I am a novice caller in a ceilidh band. It’s a band made up of parents from the school, formed by a note I sent round via school bag post, seeking a group to play local, family-friendly ceilidhs for fun. We soon assembled a full team, but no-one stepped forward to do the calling. So after a few web-searches and a bit of a brass-neck, I’m exploring a whole
new world.

In getting to know the dances, it’s been quite fun working out which tunes would suit which dance. And now I’m thinking of having half a traditional ceilidh set and half a disco set when we play. That way the band will get a chance to party too!

This is sooooo the next Zumba