strathspey@strathspey.org:26427

Anselm Lingnau

Re: for those concerned with the RSCDS

June 26, 2001, 11:47 p.m. (Message 26427, in reply to message 26422)

xxxxxxxxx@xxx.xxx writes:

> --- Hasn't there traditionally been localised forms of country dance?
> That was certainly true of highland dance until some group decided they
> wanted to standardize highland dance for competition purposes. There is
> something to be said for that so everyone is competing on the same
> scale. But outside of competition, if I do my highcuts differently than
> someone else, no one probably cares.

That's fine if you're a highland dancer. The point of highland dancing, 
after all, is making a spectacle of oneself (only), and who cares about 
all the others on the stage?

Scottish country dancing as a *social* pastime had had local variations
for a couple of centuries, and see where that got it -- it was only
after the (R)SCDS was established and the dances and dancing were
standardized that SCD really took off as an international thing. There
are more Scottish country dancers today than there ever were when `local
variations' were the done thing. And I personally happen to think that
it is probably the greatest asset of the Scottish country dance scene
that I can go from Frankfurt to Edinburgh, Boston, Cape Town, Tokyo or
Melbourne and expect everybody to dance the figures the way I do, which
means I can join in instantly without having to figure out all the
`local variations' first. Compare that to, say, international folk
dancing, where teacher A will gladly tell you X and teacher B Y (the
direct opposite), and they will both claim that their way of doing
things is the One True Way, or with (contemporary) ballroom dancing,
where you can count yourself lucky (or very able indeed) if you can
manage to strut your fancy stuff with anyone other than your designated
partner that you have been practising together with for month.

Being able to dance socially, from the word go, anywhere in the world
with people from all over the world is the true legacy of the founders
of the RSCDS and not something to be thrown away at all lightly, for the
sake of a few quid a year.

Anselm
-- 
Anselm Lingnau .......................................... xxxxxx@xxxxxxxxxx.xxx
There is only one thing a philosopher can be relied on to do, and that is to
contradict other philosophers.                                 -- William James