Well didn't we pick the best weekend for our themed Seaside/Olympic Line dance weekend.
This is the second time we had visited the Bournemouth International for our clubs together, Linedance social. Joining us from Stevenage were Kath Botta’s Koots and Beverly Busolini’s Herts U3A classes. We made a party of 63 including my, (Val Hamby's) Blue Velvet Linedancers.
We arrived on Friday in bright sunshine and the weather looked like it might stay that way the whole weekend.
One of my class members, Anne Vine had created some amazing art work including 2, 9 foot friezes, that went round the front of the stage, depicting such things as fish swimming the 50m and dolphins doing the high jump. There were many more A4 pictures dotted around the walls and to set our seaside theme she had borrowed a cricket net which was draped over the disco table and we then hung fish and shells from it.
Beverly had bought some large wooden fish that sat on floor next to the net, and to top it off we had a beautiful lobster that sat in front of my
music equipment.
Friday night was requests night with the three of us taking it in turns to lead the group.
On Saturday morning we were ready for the workshop, but as the sun was shining there were not many eager people waiting to start. I started by teaching Skinny-Dipping, which was an old one I learnt many years ago that seemed appropriate fun dance to go with the seaside theme and those that attended got into the spirit of it. Next Beverly taught, Michelle Risley’s new dance, (Write Your Number), another nice beginner dance to country music. Kath Botta taught Good Luck Charm, an easy beginner dance by Linda Lee & Luvi Ong M’sai to Elvis’s Good Luck Charm.
Kath Botta Taught FUP (First Up) by Peter and Alison. This definitely enhanced by Kath’s girls wearing hip shawls with bells doing some lovely shimmies at the appropriate time. After a short free dance everyone was wanting to get out into the sunshine, so we abandoned the workshop and
took full advantage of the lovely sunshine.
There was a coach trip laid on for some to Pool and the rest took full advantage of the weather and chilled out.
The evening soon came round and with help to make the raffle table look like the seaside with lots of shells and people bringing in there table decorations, that had been made with the seaside/Olympic theme.
Steve Lovett, our singer for the evening, arrived and we soon got under way. He was very pleased that we wanted some of the old country tracks like Smokey Places, Ribbon of Highway and Jai du Boogie. He was very accommodating and made for a very relaxed evening.
Half way through the evening we stopped for the raffle and raised £110 for Sport relief. The table decoration was judged my husband Chris And Beverley’s husband Don, (both non dancers). It was very difficult to decide on a winner as there were so many good pieces, they finally decided on the Sandcastle done by the Potters Class table and the runner up was a very arty T-Shirt by Kath’s Stevenage class table. Altogether it was a very good evening.
Sunday morning came far too quickly as the clocks had gone forward an hour. As the Sun was still blazing, the workshop was attended by a few willing people wanting to go over dances that they wished to revise.
One of my class members had come late on the weekend and decided to convert the Lewis Carol poem of the Lobster Quadrille, to suit the occasion, and read it out to the crowd. We all thought it was very good and have included it separately. It was one of my class members birthday, so we had a short break for birthday cake and soon decided to take advantage of the sun before starting to pack up for the journey home. After our Sunday lunch we made our way home having had another very successful weekend.
Val Hamby
Bluevelvet Linedancers