Country Dancing at Junior Schools


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Always loved dancing. Still do and still fancy myself as a 'mover'. Pity no one else sees it that way   My first experience with dancing was when at the Windley Jr school. We would be taken

I remember looking forward to dancing lessons precisely because we were deliberately placed in boy, girl, boy, girl order: for ease of partnering but possibly also to stop the boys being silly, which

Hilarious Steven, Absolutely spot on, I can remember that feeling, of having to dance with "A Boy". I can't think of much worse at 10yrs of age. Well yes I can.....Not being Chosen!

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I remember for a short while we used to have a Barn Dance every term at Grammar School. We lads loved it as it gave us hot blooded lads chance to actually touch the girls.

I remember such dances as The Gay Gordon's, Strip the Willow, Dashing White Sergeant and St. Bernards Waltz. We also did things like American eightsome reels with one called (I think) Dip and Dive. It was fun and I would love to do some of that stuff again, but some of the moves were complicated. We just laughed it off when we messed up. I think the hardest were remembering to move along if it was a 'progressive' dance.

Hi,

I think this all started in the winter of 1962/63. A great winter. It snowed so much we did not go out for games so they taught us barn dancing with all the crazy moves. There was one called "the basket" where people sometimes got thrown across the floor. We went wrong so often it was one big laugh. The events were led by a member of the 6th form.

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#20 Siddha

My wife was at St Augustine's, too, in 1964, and they were still using the same hall. It was in a factory on Alfred Street North. The building is still there today.

#21 David

Remember Mr Sumner well, although I didn't have to visit his office - well, not that many times! ;)

Rob I left Gussies in 1959 so they were still using that place in 64. I remember the crocodile and the excitement of being out of school.

I wonder what the hall is used for now.

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I have just read Stephens post again #28. Brilliant laugh to start my day.

I can picture the scene of the village Garden Fete again as if it was yesterday, all of us girls dancing round in a big circle, watched proudly by our parents. Fair Skin and blonde hair burning in the hot sun, it's a wonder we didn't all pass out. I can't see Elf and Safety allowing that now. Not unless we all managed to dance and hold a Parasole.

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Country dancing..well if it was a category ten blizzard we didn't play outside.

The school record player- a light teak coloured big thing with gold gridded circular speakers and a whopping big red light..this would sit in the centre of the hall and we'd skip around to Match of The Day theme.

No sexual or gender crap at St.Augustines.. exercises included-

" I must,I must,I must improve my bust"!!

That bleddy school...Siddah will tell ya!

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#34

 

Standard school issue gramophones they were Ian. We had one at Berridge. We used to skip around to Danse Macabre by Saint Saens...more suited to the Manning I'd have thought, but there it is.

 

Also had a huge square of teak with a round speaker in the middle of it for schools' radio broadcasts. "Find a space, children, and stand still!" Then it was a case of imagining you were a giant/elf/tree/seed in the ground...or whatever the theme was that week.  Your teacher was probably slurping a mug of coffee while all this was going on. Didn't have cop out lessons like that when I was teaching!  ;)

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I went to Greenwood Junior and loved being in the country dancing team. I remember being at the big display on the police training ground here in Nottingham, the teams from different schools arranged like a colourful sea of costume.

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The last post reminded me of when I was at a junior school sports day event at the police training ground. One of the final movements was when we all had to fall forward. We couldn't stop laughing when someone called out "Timber"

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On 2/18/2015 at 12:32 AM, BilboroughShirley said:

Hi,

I think this all started in the winter of 1962/63. A great winter. It snowed so much we did not go out for games so they taught us barn dancing with all the crazy moves. There was one called "the basket" where people sometimes got thrown across the floor. We went wrong so often it was one big laugh. The events were led by a member of the 6th form.

Didn't Mr Sullivan, Maths teacher take dancing on a friday lunch time if it was raining and an IN day?

 

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On 2/18/2015 at 12:32 AM, BilboroughShirley said:

Hi,

I think this all started in the winter of 1962/63. A great winter. It snowed so much we did not go out for games so they taught us barn dancing with all the crazy moves. There was one called "the basket" where people sometimes got thrown across the floor. We went wrong so often it was one big laugh. The events were led by a member of the 6th form.

Jim Sullivan the Maths Teacher used to front the Friday Barn dancing or any other day when we couldn't go 'OUT' One day he jumped off the stage on to a chair and went right through it!

I happened to drive past Glenbrook Junior Girls' school recently and it has suffered the same fate as Bilborough GS - knocked down with a new school on the site!

 

 

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We had a Jim Sullivan at Boulevard school, among other things he taught R.E. As a butcher's delivery lad I used to take his meat order to his home on Harrow Road, Wollaton. Don't know if it were the same bloke. :-)

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  • Cliff Ton changed the title to Country Dancing at Junior Schools

When I was at Berridge, Miss Stockill was the teacher who organized country dancing as an extra curricular activity. I know Mrs Letsavagoo participated, as did I.

 

I've mentioned elsewhere how several of us squashed into Miss S's tiny Hillman Imp in our white dresses and tartan sashes, en route to a dancing competition at another school. It was Scottish country dancing that year but Miss S did all sorts, as did I when I was teaching years later.

 

Sadly, Miss Stockill, now in her 90s, is in a nursing home in Yorkshire, suffering from advanced dementia. She recently lost her husband who was, many years ago, head of St Mary's Primary in Bulwell.

 

I have very happy memories of her and she was universally liked by Berridge pupils which is more than could be said of some who taught there.

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I began my teaching career at a primary school in Sheffield.  There was a tradition of maypole dancing and, yes, I got landed with teaching the children how to do it.

 

Many of them were like philmayfield: couldn't dance if their lives depended on it!

 

I did rescue quite a number from strangling themselves with the ribbons...even if, in certain cases, I was tempted to pretend I hadn't noticed!

 

Maypole dancing is not easy. It requires an ability to count and recognize patterns. Perhaps it's better left to adults.

 

Incidentally, my maternal great grandfather, George Samuel Smith Ward, was born in Ompton and baptized in the lovely village church at Wellow...where there is still a maypole. I often wonder whether he and his ten siblings danced round it as children.  I doubt his mother got much opportunity for such activities. Great great grandmother, Emily Phoebe Ward, was dead at 36.

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Strangely, I can’t remember many of the country dances we did at school. … it’s very odd as I’ve always loved dancing.  Obviously they didn’t make a lasting impression on me.

It may have been because we had to hold hands with BOYS and at that point in my life, I didn’t like doing that!

(Made up for it later, though lol)

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I remember looking forward to dancing lessons precisely because we were deliberately placed in boy, girl, boy, girl order: for ease of partnering but possibly also to stop the boys being silly, which they invariably were.

 

I did my level best to inveigle my way next to a certain boy named Christopher. I had a mighty crush on him from being in the infants.  Christopher was tall, slim, good looking in a distracted kind of way and he was also very intelligent. One never saw Christopher with grubby knees from playing marbles round the playground gratings! Always immaculately turned out and spent his spare time playing chess.

 

Christopher was an only child and, surprisingly I now realize, a few months younger than I...must be the only time in my life I was interested in a younger chap!

 

Anyway, Christopher clearly didn't return my feelings. If he saw me heading in his direction, he invariably took evasive action. Not to be outwitted, I persisted and did manage to dance with him on a number of occasions. I recall he had very slim hands and rather dry skin.

 

He found it hard to avoid me in the classroom as we were both on the supposedly 'bright'' table where he usually tried to avoid eye contact.

 

Good old Christopher. He went to Mundella, I believe. I never saw him again. He's probably scarred for life.

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Margie, I''m with you there,  I can't remember ever doing country dancing at school.  But, in the 4th year of junior school, we went on a bus trip to Birmingham, to watch a display of country dancing. (summer 1958)  I know this for a fact, as the picture of our group taken just before boarding the bus, appeared in the Nottingham Evening Post. My mum bought a copy of the photo. If we went to watch dancing, then we must have danced in school! The odd bits I remember from this trip, are seeing the huge kilns from passing potteries, and sitting high up in a theatre/arena to watch the show.

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When I went to my one and only sixth form dancing class, Mellish v Brincliffe, I danced with a girl I last saw at Arno Vale Juniors. I can’t recall her name but Margie may remember her. She could always write very good, gripping stories and the teacher would ask her to read them out in class. She must have wondered why I didn’t turn up the following week but I had already decided that my dancing career was over.

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I've often wondered why I didn't pursue the reluctant Christopher to Mundella, as that was one of my choices for grammar school.  I think it was just too much of a trek and would have meant getting up an hour earlier every morning.  No one and nothing is allowed to deprive me of my warm, cosy bed.

 

Often wonder what became of him, though.

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