The Borlin Valley Polka Set
Friday, 25. January 2008, 05:15:05
I've been doing a lot of Irish set dancing. Harrington's is still popular and it's always fun. This week we added The Borlin to our repertoire of set dances. It's a very lively polka set from the Cork/Kerry area of Ireland. About half of us had danced it before and maybe half of those had actually had a lesson in it. But with the aid of an instruction book, we gave it a go. It keeps things interesting when we do new dances, but we all realized we needed to look into how that last figure was done.
We have been noticing more and more set dances being shown on YouTube. Here's the third figure of The Borlin Setdanced to the Abby Ceili Band in County Clare. Notice how lively it's danced. And in another YouTube video of the same third figure of the Borlin Set you can clearly see the steps of the body: jump-two, *dance in place*, turn 2-3, and into place - this is what makes the dance so unique.
Here is the
the famous 5th figure with the doubling that we had so much trouble with. We'll have to give it another try, now that we know what it looks like (come to think of it, we were never "taught' this figure, probably for fear we'd mow each other down or take off into flight). YouTube is great!
We have been noticing more and more set dances being shown on YouTube. Here's the third figure of The Borlin Setdanced to the Abby Ceili Band in County Clare. Notice how lively it's danced. And in another YouTube video of the same third figure of the Borlin Set you can clearly see the steps of the body: jump-two, *dance in place*, turn 2-3, and into place - this is what makes the dance so unique.
Here is the
the famous 5th figure with the doubling that we had so much trouble with. We'll have to give it another try, now that we know what it looks like (come to think of it, we were never "taught' this figure, probably for fear we'd mow each other down or take off into flight). YouTube is great!
WIDGETIZE