South Australia

Tradition: Adderbury

Music: South Australia (mp3)

Set: 6 dancers (or 4 dancers)

Props: Sticks

Stepping: Double

Sing Around:

This dance begins with a sing around in which the dancers plod in a tight, clockwise circle using their sticks to mime turning a ship’s capstan. As they do so, they sing part of a shanty:

In South Australia, I was born.

Heave away, haul away.

South Australia, ’round Cape Horn.

And we’re bound for South Australia.

Figures: Standard Adderbury, each followed by a chorus

Six-dancer set:

  • Foot Up & Up

  • Tack Over

  • Process Down

  • Process Up

  • Hands Round

  • Adderbury Hey

Four-dancer set:

  • Foot Up & Up

  • Tack Over

  • Star Right

  • Star Left

  • Hands Round

  • Figure Eight

Chorus:

  • Even dancers (2, 4, 6) grasp their sticks at both ends and hold them in front of them, high and horizontal. As they do this the odd dancers (1, 3, 5) clash by bringing their sticks down in an axe-like chopping motion.

  • They reverse: Odds shield themselves and evens do the axe clash.

  • Forehand clash, backhand clash, backhand swoosh over head, forehand clash.

  • Dancers sidestep down the set (away from the head of the set), using their sticks to mime two tugs on an imaginary rope.

  • Four capers back to head of set, clashing on the fourth step.

Video:

Both of these videos vary somewhat from the way we do it, but much is the same: