If you do some form of Scottish Dance - be it Scottish Country Dance, Ceilidh, Highland, Step, Reeling, or even Scottish Music, I hope you'll find something useful here
A Brief History of Scottish Dancing
In the beginning was the reel. Why was it called a reel? I don't know. Maybe to distinguish it from all the fakes which came later. The Scots did other dances as well, but they did love their reels. These dances, such as the Foursome Reel and Axum Reel, alternated between dancing along a looping track within the set (a figure of eight with an extra loop for the Foursome, a sort of 'H' shape for the Axum) and setting, showing off to your partner with fancy footwork. The Foursome Reel is preserved in highland dance competitions, and the Axum Reel occasionally shows up in performances, but the reels leave their most lasting influence in the figure "set and turn corners, followed by reels of three on the sides". These weren't the only dances danced. The "dancies", travelling dance teachers, brought the latest dances from the ballrooms of Edinburgh and Paris, and taught them to the farming communities along with the reels.
Probably the closest dance form to this nowadays is the reeling tradition as enjoyed mainly by the aristocracy and the military. They dance a smallish selection of dances with a rolling style suited to their brogues and court shoes.
Around the turn of the century, a new set of dances became popular. These dances, such as the Gay Gordons, Pride of Erin Waltz and Brittania Twostep, were done in twos and threes around the room (probably showing the influence of ballroom dancing). These dances joined some of the old reels in the Ceilidh explosion which started in the 1970s and continues to this day. The dances are taught in Scottish schools and danced at parties, weddings and Burns suppers.
In 1911, Cecil Shapre formed the English Folk Song and Dance Society to preserve the folk dances of England. The Guiding movement adopted these, recommending them as an activity for the girls in the movement. Mrs Ysobel Stewart, Guide Commissioner for Argyll decided it would be more appropriate for Scottish guides to learn the Scottish Country Dances. She wrote down some of the dances she remembered, and contacted a Glasgow publisher, who put her in touch with Miss Jean Milligan, a PE lecturer at Jordanhill College in Glasgow, for verification. The collaboration between the two led to the formation in November, 1923, of the Scottish Country Dance society, to practise and preserve Country Dances as danced in Scotland. In 1951, King George V conferred the title "Royal" on the Society.Scottish country dancing as promoted and taught by the RSCDS, has evolved from these beginnings, becoming more elegant, athletic and balletic, spreading all the way round the world, and inspiring many new dances to be written.
The fancy steps used in the Reels developed into competition show dances, the Highland dances These include the world-renowned "Highland Fling", the aforementioned Foursome Reel, and the Sword Dance, as well as other dances such as The Flora, The Sailor's Hornpipe and the Seann Truibhas (not strictly speaking Highland dances, but very similar in style). These now exist almost solely in competitions and performances, but again, perhaps because they have been standardised by the Scottish Official Board of Highland Dancing, the Scottish Official Highland Dancing Association, and the New Zealand Academy of Highland Dancing (among other associations) have also found wide-spread popularity around the world.
What is Scottish Dancing?
There are several forms of Scottish Dancing around today, requiring differing levels of ability and appealing to different sections of the population. Some have been exported all around the world, some are social, some are competetive, some have been lost in Scotland, and are now making their reappearance from the colonies to where they where taken by emigrees. For a quick history of dancing in Scotland, see here. They are all danced to Scotland's wonderful music - reels, jigs and the quintessentially Scottish strathspey - and are all great exercise - they beat a trip to the gym any day!
Most people in Scotland will have been to a ceilidh at some point in their lives. These are taught in schools, danced at weddings and Burns suppers, and if you know where to look, you can generally find one to go to most weeks, at least in the central belt. These dances are fairly simple, a mixture of round the room dances and set dances, and danced purely sociably. The repertoire is limited, there is no formal technique or central authority controlling the dance form, and (a big plus for many people) you can do them when drunk. Indeed, one of the popular regular ceilidhs in Edinburgh, for a very long time, the Caley ceilidh, was run by the Caledonian Brewery until its takeover in 1994.
I am told Callum's Ceilidhs at the Wanderer's Rugby Club have now replaced the Caley ceilidh.
Scottish country dancing is another matter. This is again mostly sociable, although it is often performed, and there are even occasional competitions (which have a mixed response). Scottish Country Dancing is done in sets, typically of 3, 4 or 5 couples, arranged either in two lines (men facing ladies) or in a square, and involves the dancers dancing a sequence of set formations enough times to bring them back to their starting positions. New dances are being written all the time) and the technique is being honed continuously so that at its highest levels it is now an extremely athletic, balletic dance form (not that the majority of social dancers take it as seriously as that...). The level of complexity in the dances has risen greatly from the reels of the 19th century, and even friends who would otherwise drink like fishes keep off the alcohol when dancing - they need their wits about them. SCD is very sociable, and thanks to the Royal Scottish Country Dance Society is sufficiently popular and uniform that an SCD dancer can pack their dance shoes and be welcomed by a local group almost anywhere in the world . I discovered SCD at university, and have been hooked ever since. The extra complexity and technique makes it far more interesting than ceilidh dancing to my mind.Highland dancing
is equally wide-spread, but far more competitive. These dances, such as the Highland Fling, and the Sword Dance, are generally solo performance dances, and are mostly danced competitively (although there are a minority, such as myself, who just learn and dance them for interest and during performances). With the constant pressure of competition, standards are extremely high, and they also enjoy a standardisation through the SOBHD, the SOHDA and the NZAHD (among others) which has allowed their spread throughout the world. As well as the Highland dances, the National dances, such as the Lilt, the Flora and the Blue Bonnets are similar and danced by the same dancers. I'm not enough of an expert to say what the difference is - they all seem to be in a similar vein to me. There are a few dances done by more than one dancer, the Foursome Reel, the Twasome and the Broadswords being three examples.Cape Breton step dancing
is also (I believe) mainly solo dancing. This dance form was lost in Scotland, but preserved in Nova Scotia by the Scottish emigrants, and has recently started making a comeback in Scotland. It is a form of percussive hardshoe dance, similar in sound to the hardshoe Irish dances made popular by Riverdance (though afficianados will probably tell me that's all wrong and the two are nothing like each other). I think it is mainly danced for performance and in sessions like (or with) Scottish music. But I'm not an expert, so I may have got that all wrong.
The final form of dancing reeling, is probably the closest form of Scottish dancing to how dances were done 100-150 years ago. It is most popular among the aristocracy and the military, travelling the world with them (but at least until recently, not really spreading much outside those communities). The dancing style is more rolling and less balletic than Scottish Country Dancing, although more defined than ceilidh dancing, and the etiquette of reeling is very different to that of SCD. The reeling repertoire is a subset of the dances enjoyed by Scottish Country dancers.
Keith Eric Grant's article on SCD injuries (by courtesy of TACtalk). This is a PDF document and requires Adobe Acrobat Reader or some such.
This post was modified from its original form on 08 Sep, 14:09
