The Gay Gordons

How The Gay Gordons is danced

1. Right hands joined over the lady's shoulder (man's arm behind her back) and left hands joined in front. Walk forward four steps, starting on the right foot.
2. Still moving the same way and without letting go, pivot on the spot so the left hand is behind and the right in front, then take four steps backwards.
3. Repeat both of the above in the opposite direction.
4. Drop left hands and raise right hands above the lady's head. The lady pivots on the spot; the man may set.
5. Join hands in ballroom hold and polka round the room.

You do not need to memorise any of this. Garry walks the room through every dance before the music starts and keeps calling all the way through it — the steps are here because some people like to read ahead, not because anybody is expected to arrive knowing them.

What it needs, and who it suits

Formation

Couples in a ring facing anticlockwise round the room. No sets to form and no counting off, which is exactly why it goes first.

Music

March time, brisk and four-square. The tunes are the ones everybody half-knows — the sort of pipe march you could walk to without being told.

The room it needs

Any shape of room. It travels round the outside, so a long thin function suite or an awkward L-shaped bar area works as well as a proper ballroom.

For beginners

The most forgiving dance in the repertoire. The walking is ordinary walking, the pivot is the only thing to learn, and a partner who has done it before can carry someone who has not.

Where it falls in the night

Almost always first. It is the dance that gets a room off its chairs, because it needs no organising: couples simply join the ring wherever there is a gap, and latecomers can slot in mid-dance without breaking anything.

What usually goes wrong

• Letting go of hands on the pivot. The turn happens without releasing either hand — dropping them is the single most common thing that goes wrong, and it turns a neat pivot into a tangle.
• Walking backwards too tentatively. The four steps back cover the same ground as the four forward; a half-hearted retreat leaves the ring bunched up.
• Starting on the wrong foot. It begins on the right, and while nobody will be thrown out for getting it wrong, the whole ring looks better when it starts together.

Where it comes from

Takes its name from the Gordon Highlanders, and it has been a ceilidh and dance-hall standard across Scotland for well over a century. Like most dances in this list it exists in several slightly different versions depending on who taught you — the caller's version is the one that counts on the night.