Contacting Us
You can contact our Secretary, David Horwill, by email or by telephone (01932 784 866).

You can also email the webmaster@surbitoncaledonian.co.uk about matters relating to this website.

Where and when we meet (and what it costs)
We meet on Thursdays at 8:00 pm in the St Marks Church Hall on Church Hill Road, Surbiton (Map).  The hall has a car park and there is plenty of additional parking places on the road.

Non-members pay £3:00 and members pay £2:00 for these general dancing sessions.

What we do
We do around 12 dances each evening with a tea-break half-way through.  Depending on the type of dance, each one takes from around 4 to 8 minutes.  Most of the dances are lively reels or jigs but there are also three or four of the slow and elegant Strathspeys each evening.  See the Scottish Country Dance primer for a description of these.  Although a number of the dances will have been danced by the club many times, we still have a walk-through for all of them (for the benefit of beginners and more experienced alike - as we dance well over 100 different dances each year, we all need a bit of a recap).  The MC for the night talks us through the various parts of the dance while we walk through it.  Usually the most inexperienced dancers get a chance to act as the first dancing couple during the walk-through which helps them learn the dance.

Then after a bow and a curtsey, off we go!  At Surbiton, the watchwords during the dances are teamwork, tolerance and, above all, enjoyment .  We have all been beginners and many of us always will be!  If you are in danger of losing the plot in the middle of one of the more difficult dances (which we occasionally try) you will always find guiding hands or a gentle nudge to help you find your way.  But when things go wrong, this provokes laughter, not frowns!

Tuition and Feature Dances
Sometimes one of the dances is used as a basis for some tuition (or revision) of one of the formations that it contains.  Also, when we introduce a new dance (called a Feature Dance on the programme) we take a bit more time in walking it through and we usually dance it for three weeks in a row to get it into our heads.

Dance Protocol
As with any Scottish Country Dance, you find a partner and get on to the floor to make up sets of 3, 4 or 5 couples.  Couples who come along as an "item" (to use the current vernacular) usually spend more time dancing with other members than with each other.

Dress Code
Kilts and long white dresses with tartan sashes are most definitely not needed, though on our special evenings, you will see a bit of Caledonian couture.  Soft shoes with leather soles are ideal.  If you want to buy the nice soft dancing shoes that most of us wear, look at the suppliers page for some suggestions.

Times

For our normal Thursday evenings, we start at 8:00 pm sharp!  If you arrive late, you will miss the first dance, which is usually a lively reel to get us warmed up.  Most of us stay until the last dance finishes at 10:30 pm while others leave part way through.

Calendar

In addition to our regular Thursday evening sessions, we have a number of special evenings.

Membership
There is no need to be a member to enjoy the fun at Surbiton.  But by becoming a member, for the bargain price of £5.00 per year, you will save £1:00 each night you come along.  See the Membership page for details.

Officers

If you would like to know who does what, click here.