SBIDA Update
Class Starting Back
Classes will be starting back from Wednesday 29th and Thursday 30th January at the usual times. This will give us a good 10 week run between now and Easter when we’ll be breaking for a few weeks. Coincidentally, this is also around the time another SBIDA baby will be joining us!
We’ll be getting back to our workouts at the start of class, along with a bit more emphasis on stretching and mobility. We’ll also have a more extended focus on teams this term; we have planned to put together a book of modern céilí teams, so we’ll hopefully get that a bit closer to that goal! Solos won’t be neglected though, and rather than ultra-fast routines, we’ll be working on building confidence and technical abilities. For people already confident though, we’ll have plenty to keep you busy too.
Newbies
We’ve deliberately withheld people from joining SBIDA over the past few months as it provides logistical difficulties in constantly needing to spend time introducing people to the very basics. Over this next week or two though, all classes will be seeing some new faces! SBIDA works best because everyone helps everyone else out and we know it’ll be the same with our new starts, so thanks in advance!
Wednesday 6pm class in particular will be seeing a big spike 😉 As usual, we expect the initial madness of people joining to settle down after a few weeks.
BBC Feature
We were contacted by the BBC who are doing a feature on the recent rise of ceili dancing in Belfast and are interested in doing some recording of SBIDA (which is nice, as our official motto is ‘Bringing Back the Ceili!). They’ve already recorded some footage during a performance by some of our dancers in the Points at a Trad for Trocaire night (over £1,000 raised!) so big thank you to all those dancers.
The next plan though is to come along to class, so Alan (and possibly another videographer) will be coming at 7:15pm this Wednesday 29th to film a little bit at the end of the 6pm class and into the 7:30pm class. He also wants to interview two dancers from the 7:30pm class who heard about SBIDA after Belfast Culture Night. If you’d be happy to do this, please PM our page!
The feature will be on the BBC NI news website roughly around the weekend of 31st Jan – 2nd Feb. He’s also thinking about possibly make it a larger feature, but not sure about that. As always, if you’d rather not be on film please let us know in advance.
St. Patrick’s Day
Lots of queries about our plans for St. Patrick’s Day! We’ve been asked to take part in the St. Patrick’s Day parade in Belfast City Centre so we’d love any volunteers that will be around to helps us. We’re limited to around 16 people and EVERYONE is eligible, whether you just started dancing last month or have been going to the class since way back when we started (more on that soon).
The actual plan for the day is as follows: Be in Belfast City Centre for 11:30am. We’ll have a portable sound system. Will be walking behind a float for 1 mile (leaving from City Hall, down towards Victoria Square, and around again – will confirm that as soon as we know it). The parade lasts 1 hour and after that you’re free! Clothing for this won’t be fancy. If you’d like to find out some more info about it (honestly, please give it a go!) PM the page. We’ll have extra (free) classes for the people interested in this.
(Bonus info) That night, Donna and Ethan have been asked to call a ceili, but it’s not a SBIDA ceili. Should get some more information on this soon though for anyone that’s interested.
Social Media
Something new we’d like to try! It’s difficult when we’re teaching to always remember to get stuff for social media. We’re more than happy to give our Insta login details for the page to one or two members of each class, and for them to be our media peeps / do stories / posts. Main criteria for this is that you aren’t going to put anything that gets us in BelfastLive for the wrong reasons, and always ensure you have permission from people before putting it up. (This can be done after filming but before posting). If someone has given permission once obviously you don’t need to keep going back to them.
As with the other stuff, let us know if you’re interested by PMing the page.
BONUS ROUND on social media
Recommendations and reviews really help us get spotted online. If you feel we’re doing a good job, we’d be indebted if you could leave us a nice review on our Facebook page!
Charities
We need to decide who our next charities will be. To recommend a charity, PM the page with your recommended charity. We’ll then do a Doodle poll with the most popular options for the class to vote on and pick the top two.
Thank you again to everyone that helped make our last ceili a huge success. We raised almost £600 for Macmillan and Children’s Heartbeat Trust and will have a cheque presentation in class in the next fortnight or so.
A special shout out to Thomas and all our dancers who visited the care home just before Christmas. One of SBIDA’s three core values is community, and these performances make a real difference to people. We’ll hopefully have another similar event soon.
Survey
We sent out a survey to hear your thoughts about 1 ½ years ago and have tried our best to improve based on your feedback! We’ll be sending out another one in a few months to get your feedback on where else we can improve.
Other Stuff
Firstly, congratulations on making it this far! Some very other minor points
- We’ll be updating this website soon (we’ve already got a second site that just needs more work)
- It will soon be our 4th birthday. We’d love to do a social event to celebrate it. One suggestion was climbing Cave Hill, then going for drinks. Happy to hear any other thoughts you have! We’ll send more info on this soon.
- We have a potentially big event at Belfast City Hall in September. More info on this as we get it.
- Anna Muldoon is officially the youngest SBIDA dancer we have. This is just an excuse to say congratulations to her amazing mum and dad (and auntie!). Thank you also to all the people (Linda, Rachel, Thomas, Amy etc.) who helped us keep classes going so well over Donna’s maternity!
- You guys are awesome and we’re incredibly grateful and proud that you seem to keep coming to the class. Thank you.
Much love,
Donna, Linda and Ethan
Irish Dancing for Adults 