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Making a dance instruction video at Newton House

September 28th, 2008

I arrived at Newton House not entirely sure what I was going to do during the 2 weeks… but after a ceilidh in Berneray and a night of everyone trying to revenge themselves on us (Scottish dancing without a caller to help can be quite chaotic for the uninitiated), some of the other artists tried teaching us some of their national dances…

I decided to try to learn these dances, the English are thought to be pretty bad dancers so…

I asked everyone to teach me their national dances, and recorded the sometimes hilarious, sometimes very clear, instructions…

I tried to perform these dances out in the landscape around Newton House, shyly doing it alone at a distance from the house having set up the video camera on a tripod and having pressed play…

The landscape and weather proved to be a powerful influence on this plan… and I had never used video before.

GHANA Agbaja dance instructions - click here to listen!