Yesterday at Brades Primary School was the first time that we had truly “blended rhythms” when the drummers played for the dancers! The dancers started with a warm-up around the room to get used to the new music, and it only took a few minutes for everyone to get a hang of it. The rhythms are essentially exactly the same, but the drums just sound a little different from the Irish fiddle and accordion 🙂

Putting the dancing and drumming together was a great experience. Not only do the rhythms blend surprisingly well, but the students (both dancers and drummers) seemed to focus more, since they knew they were relying on each other for the collaboration to work. And they also seemed to feel a bit more pressure with a new audience!

And the dancers learned, of course, to always bow to (or otherwise acknowledge) their musicians after dancing.