2011 Elm City Assembly

This past weekend we attended the Elm City Assembly, the annual English country dance ball hosted by the New Haven, CT ECD group.  Our weekend of dance began on Friday night with our usual practice.  After a few weeks away (due to the several winter storms we've been hit with lately) it was great to get back into the swing of things.  We even got to dance Rebecca's favorite, "Fenterlarick" (thanks Peggy!).  On Saturday, we had an afternoon workshop led by our ball's master of ceremonies, Bruce Hamilton, who traveled from California to be a part of our event.  During the workshop, Bruce brought us through some of the dances on the list for the ball.  Still being fairly new to ECD, it was a very helpful prep-session and a great opportunity to learn some new dances.

The ball was a wonderful event and a huge congratulations and thank you to the organizers and musicians!  There were about 100 guests from Connecticut, New York, and other places nearby in New England.  It was so fun to meet new fellow ECD dancers and to see everyone dressed up for the occasion!  I had the opportunity to wear my new blue and yellow changeable taffeta sacque-back gown (Rebecca's post on that will be coming soon).  There were a total of 20 dances on the program for the evening, varying in degrees of difficulty beginning at a level of moderate experience.  Some of the dances were modern ECD constructions, but the majority were original to Playford or other 18th century dance masters.  We both managed to keep up fairly well, although "Hambleton’s Round O" still manages to confuse me every time!  I sat out a few of the more advanced dances, but loved watching everyone else swirl around the dance floor.  After such a fun evening we are looking forward to more ECD balls in the spring!