English Country Dance workshop with Bruce Hamilton. Sliding scale admission: $10-15
For more details contact Loui Tucker (408) 771-4542
Bruce Hamilton
Bruce Hamilton
Bruce Hamilton is a thoughtful and energetic teacher of English and Scottish country dancing. He started dancing in college, and took up teaching in the early 1970s. He founded the San Jose English dance and has taught English country dancing all over the United States and abroad. He is a founding member of the Deer Creek Morris Men, a 15-year participant in The Christmas Revels, and past president of the Country Dance and Song Society. Bruce has been focusing on non-choreographic elements of English Country Dance (ECD). He doesn’t teach many new or complex dances (claims he can’t remember them!) but instead focuses on skills that apply across all dances. He is interested in how the dancers move, how they give weight, how they match the music, how well they work with their partners, etc. In workshops Bruce also reviews the fundamentals of turns, heys, rights and lefts, using dances that will help these people work on those skills. He carries this focus into his sought-after callers’ classes, which he’s done for the last three decades. Training ECD teachers is relatively unexplored territory and it’s very exciting. Learning to teach takes years, but even in a weekend or week-long mini-course he’s been able to point students in useful directions, and some have made great strides. By day, Bruce is a retired computer scientist and now helps out with his wife’s dog and cat rescue organization. He has taught at Mendocino Folklore Camp, Pinewoods Camp, Timber Ridge and Stockton Folk Dance Camp, and in five countries.
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