Step dancing: a multifaceted tradition Solo dancing at home has provided many of us with our only way to keep moving to music over the past year. But thinking back over past centuries, it is clear that Scottish solo dancing, usually described as Step dancing, was and continues to be a part of Scottish culture. In this article, Mats Melin and Jen Schoonover look back over the development of this tradition. The term ‘Step dancing’ is used in some areas of Scotland to refer to any solo dance comprised of a sequence of steps. Steps are movement motifs that, strung together, form a dance, similar to the way words in a sequence tell a story. Within Scotland, ‘Step dance’ can mean different things depending on context and cultural location: it can refer to the iconic Highland Fling, Sword Dance, or Seann Triubhas, to ‘National’ dances such as Blue Bonnets or Over the Water to Charlie, or to the Ladies’ Step dancing genre that emerged in the first half of the twentieth century. It can also refer to percussive dancing, or, as Kenneth Burchill explained it in 1938, ‘the expression of rhythm by means of feet.’
relevance to those of us interested in Scottish dance. The standard of percussive dancing in Scotland in the late 1800s was high. However, from the late nineteenth century through to the middle of the twentieth century, a pattern emerged across Europe where small groups of people formed associations promoting certain types of dance. These groups worked to set standards of approved styles of execution, intending to highlight favoured national traits of ‘who we are’ in dance. Whether that was Scandinavian national folk dance and song organisations such as Svenska Folkdansringen, the English Folk Dance and Song Society, the Gaelic League in Ireland, or the RSCDS or RSOBHD (Royal Scottish Official Board of Highland Dancing) in Scotland, to name but a few, the patterns of their individual principles, aims, and refinement efforts regarding vernacular dance were strikingly similar. Certain fashions and genres of dance, specifically ones learned through affiliated teachers, were promoted. Preferred ways of ‘correct’ dancing, having an organisational stamp of approval, were pitted against other forms of dance which, most often, had naturally morphed and evolved in local contexts. The success of this wave of standardisation came at the expense of percussive and vernacular dance variation, but traces of those practices can still be discerned.
Irene Fidler’s Step dance class: St Andrews 1985 Dancie John Reid’s Step dance class: St Andrews c. 1930
The First of August and the East Fife Clog Hornpipe are two examples of Scottish percussive dances enduring from living memory. Historical accounts reveal that percussive dancing was widespread in Scotland in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. A few instances may be familiar: Frederick Hill’s 1841 notebook contains notes on dances done in a percussive manner, such as the Flowers of Edinburgh and the Earl of Erroll; Dundee dance master David Anderson’s 1897 ballroom guide provides directions for single and double trebles and other percussive steps. Percussive Step dancing is commonly perceived as a hallmark of Irish dancing or the clogging styles of Canada and the USA. The truth of the matter is much more complex. Every country on the map has many dialects in language, music, song, and dance which coexist in parallel and influence each other. Just over a hundred years ago, ‘Step Dance’ was, in the words of the English folk dance collector Cecil Sharp in 1911, ‘the most popular folk dance at the present time, [...] a standing proof of the capacity of the village dancer to create and execute extremely complex and intricate movements.’ Because Step dance was so popular and widespread, Sharp deliberately avoided documenting it. Film footage taken in London of competitive Step, also called ‘Clog’ dancing, survives from the late 1800s, and provides a glimpse of this quick, precise, and playful form. This footage, in the Huntley Film Archives, is available here www.youtube.com/watch?v=p-dtk7WwqBE) That the winner of that self-proclaimed ‘World Championship’ was a man named Burns who hailed from Glasgow is of particular
14
www.rscds.org
At the end of December 2020, a thirty-year on-and-off project came to its conclusion, when our book Dance Legacies of Scotland: The True Glen Orchy Kick was published by Routledge. Included are findings from years of research tracing references to and recollections of percussive Step dancing in Scotland. We list many historical accounts depicting the clattering boots, shuffling, and beating in time to music, as well as snapping and clapping. We dissect terminology and relate Scottish dancing to wider European dance practices and fashions. Practices that survived in the Scottish diaspora help tell different sides of the story, and we share personal accounts of recent fieldwork throughout Scotland. While researching, we had to find our way through a maze of terminology used in historical sources. ‘Step dancing’ has many facets, with various definitions and layers of history to consider. Meanings evolved with fashions and time periods, as did the language used by dancing masters, who were widespread and plentiful in nineteenth-century Scotland. Some labels denoting solo dances of the time, such as Pas Seul, High Dance, Hornpipe, and Rant, also got placed on dances that incorporated shuffles, trebles, and toe-and-heel movements. More recently, the dance categories of Ladies’ Step dancing and the curiously named ‘Lesser Known’ solo dances were coined, and include dances incorporating these types of movements. Some were seen as gender specific. Dancie John Reid, who taught at Summer School in St Andrews in the 1930s, taught certain dances to girls only, and some to boys and men only. As it became more commonplace or acceptable for adult women to perform dances publicly, Ladies’ Step emerged as a distinct style at RSCDS Summer Schools, offered in parallel to the male-only Highland dance
