Scottish dance all over France and across the world
By Marion Hay and Robin Poulton
Wherever Brits settle, they start clubs, pubs, and Scottish dancing. Together with dancing come music, whisky, haggis and the fun of Robert Burns’ birthday celebrations in late January. France’s biggest Scottish Balls are in Paris, Lyon and Montpellier. There is a bilingual ball in Brittany every June, with dancers visiting from the English coast and the Channel Islands. Brittany alone has seven Scottish dance groups, and others thrive in Grenoble, Méaudre, Monaco, Mouges, Avignon, Angers, Bron, Loches, Uzes, Valences, Brussels, Strasbourg, Annecy, Lausanne, Geneva ….
The Royal Scottish Country Dance Society (RSCDS) is one the world’s great international friendship societies, founded in 1923 to record and develop Scotland’s dances and music. One hundred years later there are dance festivals in Italy, Russia and Hungary, more than a thousand Scottish dancers in Germany, 80 RSCDS clubs in Japan … and tens of thousands of dancers enjoying reels, jigs, strathspeys and Scottish waltzes across the English-speaking world and beyond.
Roland Telle, one of many French RSCDS teachers, commented: “My main regret is that I was 58 years old before I discovered Scottish dancing. Now that I am retired, I travel across Europe as much as I can, to attend as many dances as possible.” We hear this from many dancers at the annual RSCDS Summer School in St Andrews, Fife where Macbeth and Duncan were Kings. Every year a thousand dancers come from all over the world to spend a week in July or August dancing in St Andrews, the Home of Golf with its medieval castle and famous university. We dance, we swim on the wonderful beaches and we soak up the beauties of Scotland. In the days when the RSCDS was “adults only” we were unable to take our own children to St Andrews. Now that Summer School has looser rules, children from age 8 are welcome to learn and attend with their parents or with their grandparents. St Andrews Summer School has become the perfect family holiday!
There is no better way than dancing to keep yourself fit in mind and body, The first benefit of dancing is the FUN. You can be a teacher, or simply soak up the joy of dance while relaxing your body and spirit. Research shows that dancing is the best medicine against senility and Alzheimer’s. Fusing music with movement keeps mind and body in sync; Scottish steps and formations strengthen memory, improve balance and add poise. Learning to dance as a child or young adult brings life-long muscular benefits. Dancers learn how to carry themselves well… and it is never too late to gain great posture from dancing. Watch women walk at any age, and you can pick out the dancers. A beautiful woman knows how to hold herself. Men too. It is the soldiers and the dancers who walk tall.
Mary Queen of Scots brought French dancing to Scotland in 1560, and Scottish Francophiles took dancing back to France, starting in 1715 with the exiled Old Pretender James III (“James-de-Turd”). In Brittany, Malcolm MacGregor retired to Perros with his wife and his dancing daughter Anne who married a Breton piper Yannick Georget. The family founded Scots Bonnet, a club that has birthed several other dance groups. Each group has a different history. The Paris RSCDS Branch began in the Scots Kirk, 17 Rue Bayard (8ème). In Montpellier, members of a keep fit dance class asked a visiting Scottish student to teach them. They loved The Dashing White Sergeant so much that they wanted more. Someone said “Summer School in St Andrews” and ten Montpellierains travelled to Scotland in 1983 with trepidation, little English and almost no dancing experience. They felt the passion, and the Montpellier Scottish Country Dance club was created (in 1987). Christiane Orgeret introduced Scottish dance to her folk club in Lyon 30+ years ago, and her children are now leaders and stars of Scottish dance. Paris and Lyon both have their own Scottish dance bands: we mostly dance to high-class music CDs, but live music is the BEST ! No matter where you live in France, Scottish dancing is not far away.
Dance is especially important for children. For thousands of years, our families and communities created entertainment with stories, music and dance. Now that most entertainment is consumed, family life seldom includes music. Deprived of circles, crosses, reels and wheels, we stare at luminous rectangular screens. Bringing dance back into our children’s lives offers them the joyfulness of their cultural roots. Screens isolate us; dancing we do together. One radiant example concerns a 14-year-old disabled girl who came with her parents as a spectator. She was invited to dance and responded so well that she soon attended the weekly class. This was beneficial to all: she enjoyed herself; her motricity and her self-esteem improved; other dancers - especially beginners - became less self-conscious and helped her, enriching the spirit of team dancing. The combination of absolute fun with music, footwork and dance formation teamwork, make Scottish dancing the complete, ultimate social activity!
AUTHOR BLURB:
Marion Hay was raised in the West of Scotland where she danced as a girl. In 1977, she moved to Montpellier where she is Secretary of the Patrick Geddes Foundation France. Marion is past-President of the Montpellier Scottish Dance Club (http://danseecossaisemtp.free.fr). She also dances regularly with branches in The Scottish Borders.
Contactable at: mrondot.hay@gmail.com
Robin Edward Poulton danced his first Highland Fling on stage at the age of five. He is passionate about Scotland and St Andrews – which he says is the most beautiful city in the world. Vice-President of Scots Bonnet, he is author of an amusing 2018 dance memoir I Dance Therefore I Am (available on Amazon).
Contactable at: poultonrobin@gmail.com