DST - New Affiliated Group

Isabel and Joana from newly Affiliated Group Lapa Scottish Dance group tell us a bit about their group and how they got started.

'The Lapa Scottish Dance group from Lisboa, Portugal was founded on May 6th 2012 by Isabel Monteiro and Joana Ferreira, following a kind invitation by Roger Picken. The first class was attended by twelve dancers, and it included St Andrew’s Fair and Good Hearted Glasgow.

The group, that dances at the Church Hall of the St Andrew’s church of Lisboa, did its first demonstration on July that very year, in a charity event organised by the Congregation.

Years went by… Both Isabel and Joana completed their training to become Scottish country dancing teachers and became fully RSCDS certified in 2016. Group members regularly dance in international events and Summer School of 2019 was attended by twelve members, all together.

In 2019 a young group was formed and started dancing. Unfortunately, COVID suspended the classes but very soon, on June 2020, classes restarted in gardens. During wintertime they had to be suspended again but spring, with its good weather, encouraged both the advanced as well as the beginners/young class to dance again. Since May 2021 the classes have never stopped!

Four of the advanced class members completed successfully Unit 1 and two of them will attend Summer School, hopefully to complete Units 2 and 3. Two class members, a pianist from the advanced class and a fiddler from the young group are starting a duet. We’ll have live music in class!

We aim to encourage new dancers to join the wonderful experience Scottish dancing bring us and naturally we wished to be closer affiliated to the RSCDS. In a near future, we envisage the creation of a Lisbon branch. So, it seemed natural to us to become an Affiliated Group.

We are celebrating 10 years since formation. We spent a dancing weekend all together, just for class members (now around 28 in total) and organised a local ball, with some live music, for May 22nd! Good hearted Glasgow is the first dance of the programme! We look forward to more and more dancing!'

Interested in becoming affiliated to the RSCDS? Click here for more information.