So we are back dancing after COVID!
I am living in Brittany, in North-West France. We started post-Covid dancing in the central, beautiful, medieval city of Josselin, in July and in September. Next Josselin dance meeting is on November 14h. I confess these Highland dance feet are not our Breton feet. We leap less high and we are non-competitive. Dancing is for joy. We dance for pleasure, whether with our old friends (skilled and experienced) or with our new friends who are Beginners.
Our new RSCDS Branche Bretonne began at a different level of dancing from Scotland ! To start with, we danced in sunshine beneath an avenue of the trees (a lovely environment, but uneven footing); and we had as many beginners as experienced dancers; in addition to which we are all rusty after 18 months without dancing. Our 2018 ambition to contribute videos for the RSCDS, is quite some way off after such a long pause without any dancing at all. But when we make mistakes, we smile and keep dancing.
Now all the Breton dance groups have restarted. Some of us kept dancing in our heads via the internet. We watched wonderful dance videos, and enjoyed the creative RSCDS weekly “dance at home” teaching sessions offered by teachers from all around the world (Scotland, America, New Zealand, Japan, Russia, Germany, Australia, Canada ….. you get the idea). A quick and sincere “Thank You” to Angela Young who organized everything, week after week, and to all the teachers who contributed lessons. Never before have I been allowed to drink a glass of wine while the teacher demonstrated his/her dance.
You know what they say about the pandemic: “for the first time, my hands have consumed more alcohol than my mouth.” Well, those glasses of wine have helped to redress the balance.
For pleasure and for nostalgia, I watched some Richmond’s Silver Thistle Dancers, trained by the wonderful Moira Turner (once of Edinburgh and now of Richmond, Virginia). Moira and I must have danced in Edinburgh at the same moment: but Moira danced in a very high-level demo team, while I was joining balls at Edinburgh University where we danced for fun.
But I danced well. I danced in the St Andrews University demo team, holders of the Inter-University Scottish Country Dance Challenge Cup. Our teacher Rhona Murray (now Rhona Burchick) sent me a photo of our team, taken from a demo of the Hebridean Weaving Lilt in 1967 and in bare feet. Watch it on the internet: the running step is great fun.
The trick in this photo is to find me.
Well: on the left is Iain, the tall one is Donald, then Robin, and Kenneth.
Rhona wrote to me:
“I have been reading your book with great interest, both because of my involvement (still) in Scottish Country Dancing, but also because of the St Andrews connection. I was at St Andrews University from 1963 till 1967, and in 1965, '66 and '67 I tutored the demonstration team. We performed in the Younger Hall at the Celtic Society and Staff Highland Ball.
“I am still very active in SCD, teaching a Branch Class in Eyemouth, a U3A class in Duns and helping another teacher with the Branch Children's Class in Duns. Until a year ago I was Duns and District Branch Chairman, and am still on the committee, and actively helping promote our annual residential weekend.
“I agree with many of your statements in the book re difficult dance programmes. I also attended Moral Philosophy classes at St Andrews when John Stuart Mill's “greatest happiness for the greatest number” theory was discussed. The book is an entertaining read, even if I think you praise beautiful dancing women too much! What about the less-than-beautiful ones!!”
To which I replied:
My Dear Rhona
All women who dance well are beautiful. It is true! Time and again I look at women on the dance floor and realize they are beautiful; but at the same time I recognize that I might not look twice if I met them on the bus muffled against the cold wind (which has probably made their nose all red). So I challenge your criticism of my book; and I am thrilled that it is the only criticism you have! Of course the women are beautiful when they dance.
It is partly a question of “deportment”: do you slouch when you walk, shoulders rounded with shuffling feet, or do you walk like an athlete, upright and elegant as a dancer? I can identify the dancers when I see them walking in the street.
Even a hippotamus can be beautiful if he (or she – how can you tell?) can dance.
And if you do not read my Dancing Hippo monthly, Folks, you really should go to it and sign on!
Go to the end of my dance blog at robinpoulton.com
Which brings me to the music. Moira’s husband is a former world fiddle champion (multiple champion), a teacher, and a formidable (and tall) musician.
If you wanna help musicians after the pandemic, collect Scottish music and you cannot do better than to start with Fiddletree:
http://www.fiddletree-music.com/johnturner/scdrecordings.html
John holds the wee fiddle that travelling dancies (dance teachers) used to carry as they rode through Virginia, teaching dances on riverside plantations and in isolated mountain communities. John is an expert in 17th and 18th century music.
From Fiddletree, move on to the amazing modern bands we dance to in Virginia:
Elegant portraits of fabulous musicians whose playing has given me so much joy, and who have given exquisite pleasure to so many dancers. We were driving to a Ball somewhere and I was just sitting in the back of the vehicle. Probably Stella Fogg was driving, with Moira and Trish and Laurel and we were discussing the pleasures of a perfect Strathspey. I was as enthusiastic as anyone: “Dancing a perfect Strathspey is almost as good as an orgasm,” I said.
“Oh no, it’s BETTER!” screamed four women in unison.
Perhaps I was not enthusiastic enough.
The purpose of this blog post was to announce that we have restarted dancing.
I must have got side-tracked. Let me encourage teachers to use the Strathspey, which allows beginners to “go slow” and take time to become aware of both the geography of a dance, and Scotland’s musical rhythm. My beginners love the Ceilidh dances, but they especially love the Strathspey.
Have fun dancing, everybody !
If you want a perfect Strathspey, here are is a suggestion for teaching: don’t worry about teaching the “going down” on the first step, and “closing in third position” can come later. Allow the flow of the music to take your dancers along. Perfect feet can come after they feel the music and love their dancing. An easy Strathspey for beginners: Anne Maclennan, one of our RSCDS-BB teachers, selected Sean Triubhas Willichan in Josselin, with simple formations to beautiful music. More complex and very lovely is the ancient Monymusk with reels; then you could introduce the three-couple dances: Byron’s Strathspey and The Wind on Loch Fyne (danced as a triangle, which is exciting) to help beginners reach an intermediate level. We danced these in Lannion last week.
More complex but lovely – still at intermediate level - are Miss Gibson’s Strathspey, and Ana Holden’s Strathspey. Moving up the scale, The City of Belfast is delightful but trickier with its espagnol. Asilomar Romantic is a beautiful dance from California at the summit of Strathspey dances with its double figure-of-eight, the all-around diamond poussette, and the hallo-goodbye setting which are wonderful to dance and all very confusing for inexperienced dancers.
I celebrated two very special Strathspeys in Chapter 27 of my dance book: The Sands of Morar and The Minister on the Loch, both of which need good dancing and perfect phrasing to be beautiful. I finished that chapter with the words “we are in love with dance and music, with the blessings of Scottish Country Dance, and with the perfection of the Scottish strathspey.”
Actually that is not true: I ended that chapter with some amusing Limericks and a bit of Nonsense. – which has nothing to do with dancing and is an essentially nonsensical British literary form. Here is a combination of the two:
There was a young man from St Bees
Who was stung on the arm by a wasp.
When asked, “Does it hurt?”
He replied: “Yes, It does.
And I’m glad that it wasn’t a hornet.
As you can tell, I still love dancing. I dance, therefore I AM.
Order the book HERE (ebook or paperback)
And my children ARE (you can see them on the cover). My Italian friend Flavio Conti is now reading my book. Perhaps he is reading it to his 5-year-old Giulia? My grand daughter Isabelle was 5 when I wrote the first story for her …. And then it grew, and became a book.