Which is the "Reel" Scottish Country Dancing?
by Geoffrey Selling
It might come as a surprise to many North American dancers that what they learn in their RSCDS classes and perform at parties and balls is but one form of Scottish country dancing. Many Scots know and grew up with other SCD forms such as Reeling, Ceilidh dancing or Old Time dancing. Each of these dance forms represents a legitimate part of the traditions of dancing in Scotland and none of them is the "correct" or "most traditional" way.
At the RSCDS Summer School at St. Andrews in 1999, then chairman Bill Clement made the following statement about other Scottish dance forms as part of his after-banquet remarks. "We tend to keep in our own little field and not know what other Scots are dancing--but the Society must take this on board." Though each of us might have our own ideas about how we wish to relate to other Scottish dancing forms, knowing and understanding the different traditions is an excellent starting place.
The RSCDS Style: In 1923, when Mrs. Stewart and Miss Milligan founded the RSCDS, they were alarmed at how many Scots were unfamiliar with their own dance traditions and how badly the dancing that was done was being performed. They were particularly disturbed by the apparent wildness of some dancers and of the foreign influences that were changing their beloved SCD.
By looking in manuscripts and talking to the old people who remembered the dancing of their youths, our co-founders tried to recreate the beautiful and traditional dancing that was part of Scotland's history. Much of their research took them back to the dancing of the 18th and 19th centuries in search of dance names, instructions and details of styling. But what they found was certainly not a uniform standard. Miss Milligan herself often spoke about not wanting to "cross all the t's and dot all the i's," yet over time, this has been increasingly what has happened.
As the Society developed, what had begun as an attempt to restore some of the traditional feel to the dancing became increasingly focused on standardization. With the advent of the RSCDS Summer School and the teacher training classes, the Society found itself in the business of determining who met the "official standard" and who did not. As many foreigners, who were not necessarily familiar with the diversity of dancing in Scotland, joined the Society, they asked countless questions about how particular steps, transitions, formations and dances were to be done. The more these questions were answered, those t's were increasingly crossed and those i's dotted. Though the dancies (traveling dance masters) of the l8th century probably presented a range of versions of the SCD idiom, in the attempt to build a worldwide dancing family (which the RSCDS has become), the Society gradually began to dance in an ever more uniform way.
This RSCDS style delights and challenges many of us. But just as many love the RSCDS style, many others are put off by it and find it too much. I've heard the phrases elitist, fussy, old fashioned, too balletic, too particular, etc. used to describe the dancing that I so love. Clearly the RSCDS style isn't for everyone, even if there are enough of us devotees to have sustained the Society for 76 successful years.
What characterizes the RSCDS style? The attention to footwork is one of its hallmarks. The emphasis on foot positions, the pointed toe, the turned-out knee and graceful, almost balletic movement is one important characteristic. The irony of our footwork is that it is a technique best suited to young, agile and flexible bodies, yet the average SC dancer is middle-aged and beyond. The concern about the "graying" of SCD continues on both sides of the Atlantic, yet our fundamental style is not very "user-friendly" to older bodies.
Another attribute of the RSCDS style is its athleticism. The springing pas de basque and the high energy skip change require considerable energy, and it is not at all unusual to see dancers needing to sit down in exhaustion before a program is completed. The injury rate among RSCDS dancers is alarming. I often see those with taped knees and ankles, or those who are forced to just sit and watch, or those who wear special orthotic foot wear to handle the stress. The RSCDS style was not always so athletic or balletic. When I was studying for my Preliminary Pass in 1969, Miss Milligan herded both candidate classes at St. Andrews into a lecture room to see a "home movie" of a 1930's RSCDS St. Andrews garden party. Not only were we amused by the hairdos and longer dresses, we were shocked by the technique of the dancing, even in the demonstration. The pas de basque resembled an English country dance setting step: little elevation, little turn-out and virtually no pointed toe. How far our steps have changed! What we practice today is more beautiful, but demands much more skill, practice and stamina. The pas de basque of that old movie looked quite simple and easy, hardly something that would take years to master.
Clearly the RSCDS style has been influenced by the development of the highland dancing as presented by the SOBHD. Some of the senior RSCDS teachers were active in the highland dance movement and the influences are obvious. Moreover, as the RSCDS's style became increasingly prescriptive, more details generally meant more rigor. As things were spelled out, the style became more stylized.
A third characteristic of the RSCDS style is the deportment and rather formalized social structure. We are taught how to look at partners, how to form sets, how to escort on and off the floor and always to smile. This has made the RSCDS style extremely social, though some people find its formality a bit stuffy and fussy. It is certainly the most genteel of the different dance forms. One major advantage of this careful teaching of social style is that newcomers can quickly learn to fit in. RSCDS dancing has its own social culture--a culture that is easy to learn and join, if it appeals to the dancer.
A fourth attribute of the RSCDS style is the tremendous numbers of dances that are taught and danced. In its numerous books and leaflets, the Society has presented hundreds of dances, a large number of which actually get danced. Then, there are the thousands of dances (I recently heard the estimate of over 9000) published by Branches, groups, societies and individuals. With so many dances to choose from, we will never be bored -- but RSCDS dancers run the risk of losing the common base of traditional dances that everyone knows. There is much of novelty, cleverness and real social feeling in many of the newer dances, but the development of local favorites can make it more difficult for dancers to travel from place to place with the confidence that most of the evening's dances will be familiar.
Finally, the RSCDS has formalized a kind of pedagogy complete with tutors, two levels of examinations, a detailed manual, examiners, and a teaching structure. It is this remarkable internationally staffed teaching arm of the Society which is to a great degree responsible for the Society's spread and success. At the same time, having so formalized a pedagogy easily leads to the criticism (often deserved) that RSCDS teaching is static and not always able to respond to the needs of particular classes or situations. It also means that there are many teachers who have learned the "drills" but may not really feel or understand the teaching/learning process. And the problems of personalities! It is easy for a strong-willed or highly opinionated teacher to present his or her preferences on points of styling or dance interpretation as RSCDS gospel, rather than individual opinion.
Whatever else one can say about it, the RSCDS style is a well-defined and particular one. Those of us who love it are intensely devoted to it and spend countless hours teaching, organizing, decorating halls, going to meetings, attending workshops, coaching candidates and all the other aspects of the Society's work. But in many parts of Scotland and also here in North America, the RSCDS style is anything but popular. We are criticized for being old-fashioned, fussy, rigid, and not friendly enough. It is easy to get defensive about these criticisms, but it might be more useful to listen and learn from them. One way we can learn is to become more familiar with and appreciative of the other Scottish country dance forms. As Chairman Clement pointed out in his St. Andrews address, ours is not even the "most traditional" style.
The Reelers: Reelers are close cousins of RSCDS dancers in many ways. Theirs is the dancing which Miss Milligan and Mrs. Stewart found and attempted to reinvigorate and retraditionalize when they founded the RSCDS. The dancing of the l8th century naturally went through many shifts and evolutionary steps on its way to the 20th century, as any folk process does. Changes in customs and technology as well as foreign influences and fashions change a country's dance forms. What the Reelers do today is the natural historical stepchild of the same dancing that our co-founders looked to as the true traditional dancing.
RSCDS Chair Linda Gaul described the Reelers to me last summer: "Reeling is the social dancing of the the Scottish gentry and country landowners. What is special about it has always been its authentic Scottishness." She went on to compare it to the RSCDS style by noting that at an RSCDS dance, the emphasis of the evening is on the dancing itself. No sooner is one dance complete, then dancers form sets for the next. The fact that the dancing is Scottish is incidental to many non-Scots, whereas the Reelers put great emphasis on the Scottishness of their events.
A Canadian Scot once explained it to me by comparing a Reelers ball to a North American dinner dance. People gather for the occasion dressed in their best. They eat, drink, socialize, dance, visit with other tables, etc. Dancing is part of the whole event. At an RSCDS dance, the dancing IS the event.
Reelers usually put considerable emphasis on appropriate Scottish attire and are a well-dressed bunch. Their events can even have an upper-class or military flavor. Yet their dancing itself is far more casual, though not without its own style. There is more birling (two-handed or arm-gripped fast turning), a more casual and less studied approach to steps and a much more limited repertoire of dances, with strathspeys receiving scant attention. Reelers also have their own way of doing certain dances (performing Duke of Perth or the Reel of the 51st in five couple sets) which differ from the RSCDS ways. One friend of mine describes the Reelers style as a "mincing style," but that may be more of a comparison to the extended RSCDS footwork rather than a true mannerism. But if Reelers have a more casual technique, it cannot be called a lack of style. Reelers tend to be quite devoted to their own ways of doing certain turns and moves, just as RSCDS dancers are devoted to theirs.
Reelers also have a different social culture. They often attend Reelers' balls in groups of eight or l6. When they get onto the floor for a dance, their entire group gets on together. Rather than counting off from the top, they get onto the floor in sets. While some RSCDS dancers find this anti-social, it might be called differently social. It's just that the Reelers tend to socialize with their own set groups.
My own first encounter with the Reeler style was in 1974 at St. Andrews. Miss Milligan had often told us what a "beautiful dancer" our patron, Queen Elizabeth, was. This was the year after the Society's Golden Jubilee, and the entire Summer School was herded into a large lecture hall to watch a movie of the Queen's arrival at the Jubilee Ball and of her dancing the first dance, Petronella.
First Miss Milligan had us watch her own long practiced curtsey to the Queen three different times. When it came time for the first dance, the Queen got onto the floor with her own set -- the one she'd arrived with. Our teachers' certificate class had finished a discussion of social spirit and friendliness that very morning and so we were shocked that the Queen didn't mingle with the other dancers. Little did we realize that she was merely dancing the manner in which she'd danced at highland balls all her life. You came with your own set and danced together. When the strains of Petronella began, the Queen's pas de basque was a far cry from the balletic step we'd been drilling all morning. It was much more casual, like English dance setting. And then came the poussette!! Where was our careful Away from the center, quarter turn...etc? The queen and her partner took crossed hands and spun round and round, eventually arriving in second place ready to repeat the dance. We were horrified and only later learned that the Queen had grown up with the Reeling style and that was how they did the poussette. What we candidates thought was "incorrect" dancing was merely a different style meeting ours! Yet our strict RSCDS training had taught us that the Queen was "wrong" (though because it was the Queen, we weren't to say anything about it). It took me many years to fully understand the importance of that difference and to realize that different doesn't have to mean wrong or inferior.
Ceilidh dancing: As Linda Gaul explained to me last summer, Ceilidh dancing is the popular idiom of Scottish country dancing. Though the music might sound quite familiar, an RSCDS dancer who walked into a ceilidh dance would instantly know that this was a different style.
Ceilidh dancing is tremendously popular with Scottish young people. It is usually casual, informal, wild, spirited and devoid of the all "correctness" of the RSCDS style. Ceilidh dancers mostly do couple dances: St. Bernard's Waltz, the Barn Dance, the Gay Gordons, Eva Three Step, and a sprinkling of "set dances": most notably Strip the Willow, the Dashing White Sergeant and the Eightsome Reel. The exuberance and even roughness of style on these last three might shock RSCDS dancers, but ceilidh dance devotees love their many turns, spins, birls and even flinging their partners about.
Ceilidh dancing has its own culture, which is much more in touch with youth culture and more spontaneous and informal. There is usually no MC or even a posted program. The band leader will lean over and announce the next dance into the microphone. Dancers find partners and arrange themselves on the floor. The dance is danced through a number of times and then the band stops. There is applause and an automatic encore is played. Dancers generally don't change partners for the "encore."
My first ceilidh dance was in Kirkwall, Orkney in 1969. Fresh from St. Andrews, I got very excited when I saw a "Scottish Country Dance" announced in the local paper. The dance didn't even begin until the pubs closed and everyone arrived well lubricated with many pints. I arrived in my kilt with ghillies under my arm, which marked me as a tourist. No one else was dressed in "Scottish" attire. The many young people were all wearing their going out clothes. The dance was very wild and we repeated many of the couple dances throughout the evening. The high point was Strip the Willow, which everyone was waiting for. We got into an enormous line of couples all the way down the room. The very top couple began swinging with right arms and then began to swing their way down the opposite sides and back to each other, just like the American Virginia Reel. As soon as they were past the third couple, another couple began. This went on for about 20 minutes without a break. It was crazy and wild -- and, as I remember, a LOT of fun, a far cry from anything I'd done the week before at St. Andrews. Nothing was briefed or taught and if you didn't know how to do a dance, it didn't seem to matter. You did it anyhow.
This does not mean that every ceilidh dance is necessarily wild. At the 75th Anniversary ceilidhs at St. Andrews in 1999, the ceilidh was not the usual "talent show" in the Common Room, but a cross between a ceilidh and a ceilidh dance in the town's Younger Hall. There were five acts interspersed with a series of ceilidh dances, done in ceilidh style, but in a more "mannered" way. We birled our way through Strip the Willow, did a progressive Gay Gordons, and I found myself in an absolutely goofy but fun Eightsome Reel, loaded with Summer School staff teachers who did all kinds of funny turns and moves. It was clear that many Scots slide easily from idiom to idiom without worrying about whether they are right or wrong. This was a style they were comfortable with, while many of the foreign visitors didn't know what to make of it. It behooves us non-Scot RSCDS dancers to realize that our dancing is not more correct or even more Scottish. It's just our own RSCDS style.
Old Time Dancing: There are some who would not group Old Time Dancing with Scottish country dancing, but listening to the music, one cannot but see the affinity. Old Time Dances are the ones that Ruth Jappy of British Columbia has so marvelously popularized in her workshops all over North America. Old Time Dances are mostly couple dances, danced in a gentle ballroom style. They include both ceilidh favorites like St. Bernard's Waltz and the Military Two-Step as well as countless others with such quaint names as the Lambeth Walk. The Old Time style feels like a cross between the old music hall dances and what has come to be called Vintage dancing here in America.
Vintage dancing is a throw-back to the ballroom dancing of the last century that depended heavily on the Mazurkas and Polonaises of Poland, the Waltzes from Vienna, the Polka from central Europe. These dances influenced the ballroom style of Britain and North America and crossed with the couple dances of British music halls.
Old Time dances are usually simple, highly social and focus on the interaction of the couple, rather than of a set. One can do a whole evening of Old Time dancing without getting that tired. Couples come and dance together, but also easily exchange dances with other couples. Old Time dance culture is gentler than Ceilidh dance culture and one finds more older people at Old Time dances.
What can be learned from all these Scottish dance traditions? Many things, but the most important is that all of them are legitimate and serve some part of the population of Scotland. But we can also take some lessons from the unstudied enthusiasm of the Reelers and the joyful exuberance and informality of Ceilidh dancers.
Our own RSCDS style has so much to recommend it but there is no place for classist attitudes or snobbery in it. We need to shed any semblance of self-righteousness about our style or any feeling of being the historically authentic dancers. All of us have a place in the dancing of Scotland. Those of us who choose the RSCDS style choose it because we like the dancing and its culture, but we don't have to demean those who make other choices.
As for myself, I dearly hope I'm around to celebrate the RSCDS's 100th anniversary. But while I'm waiting and trying to improve my schottische and enjoying Monymusk, I might do a bit of Ceilidh and Old Time dancing on the side also.
Geoffrey adds by way of clarification of the last installment: Bill Clement, former President of the RSCDS, looked over my TACTALK article and wrote the following:
Your description of The Queen dancing the poussette at the Society's Golden Jubilee Ball is not quite correct. I just had another look at the video. Clearly the Queen joins both hands with her partner as we do. They danced away from the centre, while turning and moving down the dance, continued turning into second place on the men's side, each with their back to their own side, they danced into the centre (no further turning necessary) ready to fall back to their own side. All more or less what we do but without any precision but no extra turns.
Clearly, in my youthful enthusiasm and excitement at that moment of seeing the queen dance the poussette in a way that was different from what we'd been drilling all fortnight, I did not see it correctly or remember it correctly. Bill Clement, having watched the video again to check my account, clearly has the superior claim on this anecdote and I simply stand corrected. My account was slightly jazzier but alas, I was incorrect.
© 1999 Geoffrey Selling