Gloucester Circle Dance

Looking forward to celebrating World Circle Dance Day tomorrow in Gloucester - can't wait!

Apologies for not posting for a while.

Currently my evening class is not running but hopefully will restart later this year.

Fortunately most of this group of dancers have been able to join the afternoon group which I lead as part of Gloucester and District u3a (University of the Third Age) at the Hucclecote Community Centre. If you would like more information about this group, please do not hesitate to get in touch.

On a different subject, I would like to say how proud I am of one of my dancers who has submitted a winning entry into the u3a 40th Anniversary Patchwork Quilt competition.
I was surprised but thrilled when Penny told me that she wanted to base her entry around Circle Dance and am so glad that she has raised the profile of Circle Dance by having it commemorated in such a special quilt.

Here is how Penny came up with the design in her own words:-

“I chose to represent Circle Dancing as my entry. A circle of something would be the predominant design shape around a central point - as it is when we dance. This circle turned out to be made up of several flags reflecting the worldwide scope of the dances. The central point was a flame as we always have candles in our centre piece. Around this circle were footprints (male and female) to represent our dancing feet. I included a silver pair for our dancing teacher. Inside the flag circle I showed our hands, and as this quilt was meant to represent a moment in time, these hands were unjoined. No contact during the pandemic! So that was the circle part done. But still more was needed. The music was represented by black notes in the corners and the ethos of peace and love were represented by a white dove with an olive branch and some red hearts. Now the job was finished. The fabric square was also meant to support the u3a 'strap line' of Live, Learn and Laugh. I find that Circle Dancing fulfills this brief perfectly for me. The 'living' is the exercise and movement aspect. The 'learning' is needed to master the steps and the 'laughter' comes when you get it all wrong. So circle dancing not only gives me all that, it's now given me the creative outlet to make a prize-winning bloc “

Well done Penny!

All of the winning entries to this competition can be seen using the link below
https://sites.google.com/view/u3a40thquilt/home

Keep happy, keep healthy and most importantly, keep dancing!

Anne x

Here are a few photos which should have appeared on my previous post.
Really looking forward to being able to dance in a connected circle again!

I am posting a picture taken during our World Circle Dance Day celebrations back in July 2019 - imagine, we could dance connected without any worries about social distancing!
Although we weren't able to dance together in person during most of 2020 and into 2021, we kept on dancing via Zoom and my feeling is that our group of friends share an even stronger connection now despite have been kept apart for so long.
We are back together dancing in our new venue, unjoined and at a distance from each other, and the feeling of joy when dancing together is still the same.
We will be celebrating World Circle Dance Day this year on Sunday July 11th in the lovely garden of one of our group members. Sadly numbers are limited due to space constraints and Covid restrictions, but we know that there will be thousands of other dancers joining us either in other venues around the world or in their own homes.
I look forward to opening our lovely, friendly group up to new members as soon as I am able to do so.
Wishing you a peaceful and joyful weekend x

What a wonderful first class back in our new venue!
It was so lovely to dance together again despite having to maintain social distancing throughout the class.
Well done to Keith for grabbing a couple of photos whilst still keeping up with the dance!