Learn to Ceilidh Dance | Circassian Circle
Updated: 3 days ago
The Sassenachs Ceilidh Band get everyone up and dancing quickly in celebration at your Wedding, Party or Fundraiser Event. The band play lively traditional music and teach your guests simple steps to move along to it. These blog posts help you learn to ceilidh dance!
Circassian Circle is one of our favourite dances and a classic way to start the ceilidhs we lead - for a reason!
It is fun, very easy to learn and gets all the guests up together in unison quickly. It provides a great opportunity to get everyone up and into experiencing how easily they can participate in the movements. It can also provide focus point at the start. At a wedding, for instance, the couple can enter the middle becoming the centre of attention and celebration, giving the guests even more reason to cheer at the appropriate parts of the dance.
The Setup
For this dance, you need to come on to the dance floor in couples. Come on to the floor holding hands with your partner and join up with all the other couples in a large circle around the room, everyone facing into the middle. In each couple we number off, calling the person on the left "number 1" and the person on the right "number 2". So as you look round the big circle that has formed, guests will be numbered 1,2,1,2 and so on.
The Dance
The dance starts with everyone walking in to the middle of the circle for 4 steps / beats. On the 4th beat they raise their hands in the air and shout or cheer loudly. They then walk backwards to where they started for 4 steps / beats. This repeats, with again everyone walking into the middle for four steps / beats and on the 4th shouting or cheering loudly, before walking backwards for 4 and finishing in the same spot they started the dance.
Next up, just the "number 1"s walk into the middle for four steps / beats and on the 4th beat they raise their hands in the air and shout or cheer loudly. They then walk back to where they started for 4, back to where the "number 2"s have been patiently waiting. It is now their turn, so while the "number 1"s wait the "number 2"s then walk into the middle for 4 steps / beats. On the 4th beat they raise their hands in the air and shout or cheer loudly. With this done, they walk back to their partner for four where they both turn to face each other.
Now each couple crosses and joins hand and spins around where they are, on their own for 16 beats.
With this done, they they then turn and face anti-clockwise round the circle and hold inside hands. They then walk / step around in that direction for 16 beats. (This can also be called a promenade and can be done with holding inside hands, with hands round each others waists, backs, or however you feel comfortable)
With all these steps done. the dance has been run through fully one time.
It then all repeats as many as 12x depending on the event, musicians and energy in the room!
Visualise it
Here is a video taken at the Ceilidh Club where our dance instructor or caller, Laurie walks and talks the guests through the steps for this ceilidh dance before the music starts:
Here is a video taken at Big Penny Social where the guests are all fully immersed and dancing along with the music halfway through the ceilidh dance:
Here is a full length video of the dance taken at Ceilidh Club, if you'd like to practice at home:
In summary, Circassian Circle is an excellent first ceilidh dance. It provides a great opportunity to get everyone up and into experiencing how easily they can participate in the ceilidh dance movements.
