Overview Mazurkas Polkas & Galops Schottisches Varsoviennas Waltzes

The Schottisches offered here are in a variety of forms - some are 16 bars long, others 32 bar, some start outside foot and in open hold, others same foot and in cross hold, some involve a combination of point and cuts, chassez steps and step hops, some an alternation of 2 chassez steps and 4 step hops, others nothing but chassez steps throughout. If planning to dance several back-to-back, you will want to be sensitive to the above, and perhaps group together such 16 bar same-foot cross-hand hold dances as 'The Showdown Shottische' and 'The Switch, Swish and Swing' (even though the later has step-hops and the former doesn't), and such 32 bar opposite-foot open-hold dances as 'The Short Easy Sottiisi' with the open hold 'Santa Clause is Coming to Town' (naturally 32 bars) and 'Rise up Shepherd and Follow' (if the C part is repeated to turn a 24 bar sequence into a 32 bar one), both in The Christmas Carol Dance Book. If you have another couple you can also add into a 32 bar open sequence 'Rudolph the Red-nosed Reindeer', also in The Christmas Carol Dance Book. The two Highland Schottische variants, 'The Brindabella Schottische' and 'The Southern Highland Schottische', are possibly kept separate for those occasions when you hear a 16 bar Highland Schottische style tune (suggesting as it will the opening 'point-and-cut') then instead of doing the standard 8 bar Highland Schottische over and over, fill out the tune with one of these 16 bar variants. But take care! Firstly because if other dancers are doing the standard Schottische they may be moving against the l.o.d. when you want to move along it, and secondly because The Brindabella Schottische requires cross-hand high promenade hold and both starting l.f. - in other words, will require a simultaneous change of hand and, for the woman, foot, if going into it from or out of it into, either the traditional Highland Schottische or 'The Southern Highland Schottische'.

Our apologies for the temporary removal of the dance instructions from this page. The instructions that were on this page were only sketchy working editions of dances for which you can now find corrected versions, with full historical notes and accompanying music, in the work The Lost Dances of Earthly Delights Volume 2. Although we hope to get around to putting the up-dated versions back up on the web it may not be for some time and we hope you will take the opportunity that now presents to acquire the definte version of these dances in the beautiful hard copy book and 4 CD set that is now available. Please go to http://www.earthlydelights.com.au/cds2.htm for more information, order form and contents summary.