Step Dancing: a Multifaceted Tradition

from Scottish Country Dancer Magazine, issue 32, April 2021

Step Dancing Online

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.’

**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 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**

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 classes. While soft-soled shoes are expected in these styles today, dance pupils of the nineteenth century wore dress shoes of varied sorts. You can see varied footwear in this lovely portrait of Dancie James Neill of Forfar and his pupils (pictured opposite).

In our book, we question whether it is indeed a prerequisite for percussive dance to be performed in hard-soled shoes producing crisp rhythmic patterns. Dances can communicate rhythmic effects without special footwear. In Cape Breton Island in Canada today, Step dancers perform in bare feet, trainers, or hiking boots as well as in leather-soled shoes, all seen as fitting into the same style of dancing. This seems to have been the case in Scotland (and England, Wales, and Ireland) of old as well.

It is important to keep in mind that Scottish dance techniques evolved significantly in the twentieth century. Any and all references to dancing written in the past should be read with an open mind. Care must be taken not to consider one’s own experience as the only way to perform, at the expense of ignoring other common practices. We can value each style’s aesthetics and context on their own merit and need not prioritise one over the other. While a dancer may have a favourite style, it is important to respect differences. We personally see all the varied dance forms that are, and have been, practised in Scotland as equally worthy forms of physical expression.

Stockholm born dancer, choreographer and researcher, Mats Melin has worked professionally with traditional dance in Scotland since 1995 and in Ireland since 2005. Mats is currently Course Director for the MA in Irish Dance Studies at the Irish World Academy of Music and Dance, University of Limerick, Ireland.

As well as researching into Scottish dance history, Jen Schoonover is a modern dancer and choreographer. She teaches movement, improvisation, dance pedagogy, and dance including Cape Breton Step, Ceilidh, Highland and Scottish Country Dancing.