The round dance club Whirl & Twirl was set up in 2007 by Ted and Irene Baldry so that local square dancers could learn rounds. Teresa & Paul Hart, very experienced cuers, were invited along to teach at Tuddenham and after a year they began to mentor Matt as the cuer for the club.
In 2009 a second branch of the club was opened in the Cottenham Community Centre and Matt established himself very quickly, growing in confidence and experience. His enthusiasm helped drive the club forward.
The heavy rains in early 2012 led to the closure of the Tuddenham Village Hall and the club moved to Barrow Village Hall just a few miles away on the other side of the A14. Now well established the club added Paso Doable and two popular dances to the UK round dance calendar, the Spring Fling and the Halloween Fancy Dress. Followed in 2013 by the Rounds Festival, a weekend celebration of rounds bringing together most of the UK cuers. The second festival in 2015 included the introduction of slow two-step by Christian Schidler from Germany.
The club became committee based in 2016 and shortly after Matt announced his move to Sheffield. Stephen and Suzanne agreed to become Club Cuers so that closure could be avoided. With new equipment and the support of the dancers they managed to keep the club going and continued to provide the popular open dances as well as celebrating the clubs 10th birthday with the last but very successful 2017 Rounds Festival.
All dancing stopped in 2020 with the pandemic and unfortunately the Barrow club would not reopen. During this time Stephen and Suzanne worked on producing the national reopening guidelines for rounds and squares on behalf of the nation governing bodies and also a number of dance videos for club members which included dancing on the beach.
Whirl & Twirl reopened its Wednesday evenings at Cottenham in late 2021 and then in 2022 introduced a new monthly Sunday afternoon session.
Dancing at the Fen Edge Festival exhibition Dance
Dancers from all over the UK at the Rounds Festival