Milwaukee Scottish Country Dancers

Year in Review July 2024 to July 2025

Respectfully submitted by Valerie Lau

Membership

Membership for the year 2024-2025 stands at 24.

Classes

At our MkeScd dance classes at Journeys we usually have between 12 and 16 dancers on Mondays and at MkeSCD Zao on Thursdays we are usually between 6 and 8 dancers.  If everyone came to a given class, we would be quite large! 

Terry teaches a Basic Scottish dance class through the Mequon-Thiensville Rec Department in the Fall and Spring on Wednesday evenings and about 20 beginner dancers attend his class.

TEACHERS

 We have four very dedicated teachers who travel regularly between our Milwaukee group and Madison.  They prepare us well for upcoming events, such as our Balls, or Dances, etc.  They attend TAC (Teachers’ Association) every year and are off to Sherbrooke, Quebec on August 3 to August 10, 2025 to learn new skills and continued development. In February, Rebecca and Janice also attended classes at RSCDS Winter School in Pitlochry Scotland.

Dance Parties

We had a fantastic year filled with exciting events! The Halloween Costume Ball with the Silent Auction was a successful addition. Having live music with Rare Privilege and Dave Mullen as our band added to the party atmosphere.

The Summer’s End Dance Party and December Dance Party were where we enjoyed social time with treats after class.

The "social classes" for Mardi Gras and May Day, complete with treats, was a delightful way to celebrate and socialize.

Demo Dancers

Demo Dancers 2024-2025 demonstrated at the 2024 Highland Games, the UWM Celtic Studies Kick off Ceili, Madison Youth Choir’s Burns Night, the Kerry Cultural event and will be performing in August at Irish Fest at the Dance Pavillion on August 14 at 5:15 pm and the Wisconsin Highland Games Labor Day weekend.  The Demo Dancers practice about once a month from October to August with extra practice just before an event.

Midwest Scottish Weekend

In June 2025 the Milwaukee, Madison, Chicago Scottish Country Dance Groups hosted the annual Midwest Scottish Weekend from June 6 to June 8 at Wayland Academy, Beaver Dam, Wisconsin.  We had about 60 Dancers enjoying the musicians from San Francisco, Caroline McCaskey, Fiddle, and Andy Imbrie, piano and joining them from Madison was Dave Mullen, Fiddle.

Scholarships

The MkeSCD offers scholarships for event travel and registration.

Website

Our website is up and running by our Wonder Woman Team, Loraine Garner, Tana Bembenek and Avery Bembenek.  The three of them make updates as requested.  Loraine is in the process of transferring the website into her name and paying with our account’s debit card so that Paul Gunderson is no longer tied to that website.  Paul was absolutely integral in training and assisting in the transition to the new website.