Learn to Ceilidh Dance | Riverside
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!
Riverside is one of our favourite dances and a classic way to start our second set of dancing - for a reason!
It is fun, very easy to learn and gets all the guests back up together in unison quickly. It provides another great opportunity to get everyone up and into experiencing how easily they can participate in the movements. It can also provide wonderful moments for photography as the couples take it in turns to run from the top of the set all the way to the bottom passing their friends!
The Setup
For this dance, you need to come on to the dance floor in couples. Come on to the floor with your partner and join up in one of two long lines facing each other. You and your partner are in one of the lines, facing another couple directly across from you who are in the opposite line. The dance floor will need an even number of couples in each line, so every couple has a couple opposite them. The band and dance caller will ensure this is the case before the dance starts properly!
The Dance
The dance starts with each line walking towards each other 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 4 steps / beats and on the 4th shouting or cheering loudly, before walking backwards for 4 steps / beats and finishing in the same spot they started the dance.
Next, you and your partner make eye contact with the couple directly opposite you in the line and start walking forwards to meet them. All four of you touch your right hands in the middle and then start walking around to the left in what is often called a right hand star. You do this for 8 steps / beats at which point you turn and face the other way, placing your left hands in to the middle to join up and make what is called a left hand star. You walk around in this new direction for a futher 8 steps / beats and then you and your partner return to the original place you started the dance.
Then you make eye contact with just the person opposite you in the line as next up, you're going to do a move called a Do-si-do with them. To do this move, you start by crossing your own arms in front of you. Then you walk towards that person opposite you, passing them on the left hand side before stepping to your right (at which point you go briefly back to back with them) and then walk backwards passing them on the right hand side and finishing up back exactly where you started. Then you turn and face your partner (who is still in the same line as you) and do this same Do-si-do move with them, finishing up exactly where you started.
With this done, the dance finishes spectacularly with the top two couples (top meaning nearest the band), so one couple from each line, joining up as a new line of four people and holding their hands up high (with their backs to the band). Note this line is perpindicular everyone else in the two main lines. At this point everyone else in the dance ensure they are lined up in really straight lines, exactly where they started the dance, and they duck or crouch down, allowing space for the top two leading couples to run from the top of the set to the bottom of the set for 16 steps / beats. These two couples then finish, stop at the bottom, stepping back in the lines they started from (just the opposite end of these lines from the band) and everyone in the lines side steps up a little bit to make space and then the dance starts all over again!
Visualise it
Here is a video taken at the Ceilidh Club where our dance instructor or caller had just walked and talked 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:
In summary, Riverside is a very easy and enjoyable ceilidh dance. It provides another great opportunity to get everyone up and experiencing how easily they can participate in the ceilidh dance movements.
