Southern California Scottish Country Dancing
RSCDS - Orange County
Welcome to the home page of the Orange County Branch of the Royal Scottish Country Dance Society. On our website you will find information about our classes and teachers, a calendar of our events, and links to related websites. Join us for fun, fitness and camaraderie! For more information, email rscds.oc@gmail.com or the teacher of a class you wish to attend.
What is Scottish country dancing?
Scottish country dancing (SCD) is a sociable dance form with roots stretching back for centuries. Participants are grouped into sets and work together to dance a sequence of formations. This will leave them in a new order, and the dance is repeated enough times to bring them back to their starting positions, with everyone dancing each position in turn.
SCD is mainly danced socially, for pleasure and enjoyment, but many groups also perform; there are even occasional competitions. Although the basic steps and formations are easy to pick up, the technique is being honed continuously so that at its highest levels it can now be an extremely athletic, balletic dance form (not that the majority of social dancers take it as seriously as that).
Dances vary considerably in complexity and ease of dancing – thus, careful selection of dances for a program can cater to beginners with a couple of months’ experience, or challenge and interest the most experienced dancers, or, as is usually the case, provide a range over the evening to suit most tastes.
SCD is very sociable – it is common practice to dance with different partners during a night of dancing – and thanks to the Royal Scottish Country Dance Society, is sufficiently popular and uniform that any SCD dancer can pack their dance shoes and be welcomed by a local group almost anywhere in the world.
Visit the Royal Scottish Country Dance Society website at rscds.org.
Visit the websites of the other Southern California Branches of RSCDS for more information about their classes and activities:
Los Angeles Branch: rscds-losangeles.org
San Gabriel Valley Branch: rscds-sgvb.org
San Diego Branch: dancescottishSD.org
Southern California Interbranch Website: rscds-interbranch.org
Membership: Click here for a membership application.
The Orange County Branch offers scholarships to dancers from the branch and musicians from Southern California. Applications and Guidelines are available here or from a branch teacher.
