strathspey@strathspey.org:52693

Andrew Smith

Re: No more sword dances?

June 5, 2008, 7:40 a.m. (Message 52693, in reply to message 52692)

In my [admittedly limited ] experience, Agnes is absolutely right. I was 
dancing in Bath and decided to enter the 'National' dance class at the 
Bristol Eisteddfod. I was 16 and so was competing in the '16years and over' 
class with about 8 lassies from Bristol dancing schools.When I was declared 
the winner, the atmosphere from the mums was absolutely poisonous. This was 
repeated when I again won the following year, so I decided to stop before I 
was 'kneecapped' or worse. I think that there were two problems: 1) I was an 
outsider, and 2) they had probably been competing against each other from a 
tender age in the several dance classes, and had established a pecking order 
as to who would probably win which class, and I upset that.
Not on one of those occasions, but at the end of my very first demonstration 
of solo swords, I clipped the hilt as I was backstepping out and the point 
came up to about 45 degrees before gravity asserted itself. A frisson 
certainly went through the audience - while the edge was not particularly 
sharp, the point certainly was. This links with Pia's comments of  "a bit of 
Wow." and " but phew they didn't."
Andrew Smith,
Bristol, UK.