strathspey@strathspey.org:40615

Rebecca Sager

3 X quicktime dances and music

Feb. 12, 2005, 2:01 a.m. (Message 40615, in reply to message 40613)

We enjoyed The Belfast Hornpipe not too long ago - lots of half-turn-
and-a-twirls. The deviser is Wes Clindinning and I believe we danced
it to the RSCDS recording for The Lanes of Au.
I'm afraid the most vivid memory in this area of the dance The Lanes
of Au is of a disastrous demo some years back at a North Georgia State
Park where several of us had mental malfunctions at the same time and
our beloved leader fell off the platform, a short while after his hip-
replacement surgery. The dance forever after was known here as The
Lanes of Ow! And how about Betty Lee Barnes' Flying Cloud? That's a
good one.
I assume the Muriel Johnstone track I glimpsed a reference to in this
thread is The Ruby Hornpipe on Dancing Fingers 5? Definitely a 3x32.

Becky 

Becky Sager
Marietta GA USA

-- xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx@xxx.xxx wrote:
Both Malcomb Brown and Lydia Hedge have shown us that there are plenty of 3 X 
quicktime dances extant.  So why then is there such an enormous disconnect 
between between their existence and our use of them and there being music 
available for them???  I have been at it with SCD for over a quarter century, and 
while 3 X strathspeys have always seemed relatively commonplace to me, I would 
not have been able to name a single 3 X quicktime dance and MAY possibly have 
never even done one!  And I have no thus-recorded music whatsoever (not the 
world's largest music collection by far, but still a good mixture of this and 
that).  That's why Lara's "Rice and Lefse" seemed so foreign to me in terms of 
its being a 3 X quicktime dance in a 3-couple set.

Is there some reason that this mode has traditionally remained so obscure and 
unfavored, even though the dances seem to be "out there"?  Everyone can 
probably recall the last time that you danced a 3 X strathspey at a dance or ball.  
Can you recall the last time, if ever, that you've done likewise with a 3 X 
jig or reel?

Robb Quint
Thousand Oaks, CA, USA