Celtic Reel

An online definition may be found here.

The Celtic Reel starts set up for a reel of four, with the center dancers facing the nearest ends, and the ends facing in. They pass right shoulders and do one change of the reel. Then the new centers right shoulder round three quarters and face out, while the new end dancers chase clockwise a quarter, and face in.

This leaves the dancers ready for another reel of four at right angles to the first, each dancer facing the same person as at the beginning, but now those who started on the outside are in the center and vice versa.

The process repeats, one change by the right, centers round three quarters while ends chase a quarter.

This is halfway through the reel, everyone is rotated 180 degrees

The full reel would repeat this until everyone is where they started.

History

The earliest use of this figure that I can find is Barry Skelton's The Celtic Reel published in his book The Celtic Book, 1994.

Derek Haynes published an earlier dance with that name in 1972, but it is a 3 person dance and can't use this figure.

Some dances which (probably) use this figure

• Dances for which I have animations
• Dances in (R)SCDS Books

Note: This list may be incorrect or incomplete.

See Also

• Reel

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My work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License. Most of the dances have more restrictive licensing, see my notes on copyright, the individual dance pages should mention when some rights are waived.