COMMENT
clue as these latter dances are the prerogative of fee-paying schools and county balls. So, how should her earnest desire for the
dancing to be part of the schools curriculum, I don’t think Mary Scanlon knew just what kind of wasps’ bike she was stirring up. She has stumbled on a phenomenon that is in reality nothing short of a class war. The Conservative MSP for the Highlands
and Islands was prompted to take up the issue by discovering that, in spite of being a veteran of village hall dances in her native Angus, she hadn’t a clue when it came to some of the dances to which she’s lately been introduced. She has now come to the reluctant conclu-
sion that how you dance and what you dance in Scotland depends very much on your back- ground. Not to put too fine a point on it, it is very easy to spot those who’ve had a private education and those who haven’t – and all by means of their dance steps. It is the ‘U’ and ‘non-U’ of Scottish society. Scanlon, who went to a state school, was
taught the Gay Gordons, Dashing White Sergeant, Eightsome Reel and Strip the Willow. When she started attending regular reel sessions in Edinburgh, she was confronted with dances like the Reel of the 51st, Hamilton House and the Duke of Perth (or Broun’s Reel as it’s known in Angus). Much to her chagrin, she hadn’t a
‘Reel’ Scots W
WORDS ALAN COCHRANE ILLUSTRATION STEPHEN DAY
hen she tabled a series of parliamen- tary questions at Holyrood asking for the teaching of Scottish country
A class war has opened up on the dance floor so it’s time to start teaching dances in the classroom
teaching of more dancing in our schools mani- fest itself? Well, for a start we shall have to define what sort of dancing we are talking about. I have mentioned in this space before that there appears to be a division between ‘reel’ Scots and ‘real’ Scots. The former are defined as those who attend the county-set balls and cleave to what’s known as Scottish country dancing whilst the latter are sticklers for ‘ceilidh’ dancing. An aficionado of the latter is Fergie MacDon-
ald, band leader of renown and jovial mine host at Mingarry in Lochaber. Fergie (nobody calls him ‘Mr’) has no objection to schools teaching dancing – ‘it is good exercise’ – but insists the dances should be appropriate to the culture and background of those being taught. He admires those who play Scottish country dance music but wants nothing to do with it himself. ‘It is a class thing, a social thing that sprung
from the officers’ balls of the Highland regi- ments; that’s where the Duke and Duchess of Edinburgh, Broun’s Reel, Hamilton House and the Reel of the 51st started,’ he says. Fergie’s preference is for what he terms
FIELD
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Alan Cochrane is the Daily Telegraph’s Scottish Editor
‘round the room’ dances like Strip the Willow and the Highland Scottische. ‘Ceilidh dancing is dancing for everyone,’ he maintains. I’m personally sad that this division exists,
but exist it does and I’m fully in support of Ms Scanlon’s enterprise in raising the issue. However, we surely cannot allow this split about which schools teach which dances to persist and if dancing is added to the PE curric- ulum then let everyone learn everything. I have some sympathy for Fergie’s views about
the complexity and artificiality of some of the dances favoured in Scottish country dancing but dances like the Reel of the 51st are, quite frankly, great fun and should be encouraged. Scanlon has thus far received a fairly po-faced, non-committal response from the Scottish Government to her ‘let’s teach them to dance’ requests and a mixed bag of reactions from the wider community, including some that suggest there are more important subjects for our children to learn than dance. Maybe so, but all work and no play will make our kids very dull indeed and whether we call it ‘Scot- tish country dancing’ or ‘ceilidh dancing’ seems a wholly unnecessary distinction. The kids will enjoy it, whatever it’s called.
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