I posted the links to some of the things I found about ceili dancing... the Central Missouri Celtic Arts Association website is where I found out about Jennifer Kimball's dance night. I also contacted Katheryn DiFoxfire; she's going to be at Jennifer's ceili. She "calls" ceili dances all the time; this means that she calls out what the dancers need to do next in sequence to help them along. Some of the names for certain steps are funny, I learned, like "sheepskin hay" and "round the house" - it's intimidating, but I'm starting to get really intrigued by the whole thing. I guess I'll find out what all of this is next week!

Ceili dancing is based on "jigs" and "reels" (the music played while the dancers dance). Reels are faster, and are used in set dance, while ceilis seem to usually use jigs.

So - there's ceili dance and then there's set dance. I posted the information on what each of these are... apparently, set dancing is a little more complicated than ceili... from what I can tell, it seems to be faster and a little bit more like the Riverdance type of dancing... I don't know if I'd ever be ready for that!