Monday 19th May 2025 - Parish Church of the Ascension Main Hall 8pm - 10:30pm

Please bring a small plate of food for the refreshments in the interval

For the past 13 seasons, the dances each week have been recorded on a spreadsheet that, apart from adding new dances as they appear, has remained unchanged in all that time. This spreadsheet records the number of different dances that were performed over the season and how often they were done. This season's statistics show that we have danced 165 separate dances, and if you got up for every one, you would have been on the floor 316 times over the 33 weeks that we have been dancing. Every night we did between 9 and 12 dances.The most popular dances by format were the reel Toast to the Mousies (6 times), jig EH3 7AF (5 times) and strathspey Water of Leith (5 times).

This week we are going to look back to when "records began" - has much changed? Well yes and no. In the 2012/13 season we also had 33 weeks but only danced 112 dances a total of 273 times and some nights did as few as 7 dances, but still with a maximum of 12. The most popular dances were the reel The Fireworks Reel (8 times), jig Best Set in the Hall and strathspeys The Dream Catcher and Gardeners' Fantasia (5 times each)

In these 13 years the database has grown from the original list of 112 dances to a whopping 358. How times have changed. However, the most popular dances from 13 years ago are not that unfamiliar to us, here are the most popular 10 dances from that season, all bar two of which we have already danced this year:

Joie De Vivre (5 times)
Alison Rose (4 times)
Mrs Stuat Linnell (5 times)
James Gray (5 times)
The Dream Catcher (5 times)
The Fireworks Reel (8 times)
Best Set in the Hall (7 times)
Gardeners' Fantasia (5 times)
The Dancing Master (5 times)
The Falls of Rogie (7 times)

And thus, we have our programme for tonight!