I have just joined this tribe but I must confess, I should have joined it ages ago. I’ve read all the posts in this thread and thought I would like to add my little story. I have actually written about some of my background in dance in my blogs if anyone is interested to read more but in summary I’ll write a brief overview here.

I started to learn highland dancing when I was 4 years old. That is a long time ago and I am still dancing now. Although I now concentrate on cotemporary choreography, I still have a great respect for highland dancing and what it has to offer. My mum enrolled me in the classes because I was very shy; she thought that learning dance would help. I think I am still shy to some degree but when it comes to dance, well, that’s a different story.

I competed regularly in my younger days. I loved it, but it was different then. It was very friendly competition and we all helped each other even though we were dancing against each other at comps. Most of the rivalry was because of non-dance related stuff and that is unfair to the art of highland dancing. I learnt all the standard dances and some of the lesser-known dances and passed official exams. I learn Irish dance as well and have taught both.

Well, thats a little bit about me and I have started a tribe as a kind of data base for information about traditional step dancing that you can see here: tribes.tribe.net/stepdancing