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Dances from around the world
Diana Hastie
Feb. 25, 2018, 8:21 a.m. (Message 69452)
Dear All, I’m trying to come up with RSCDS published dances from all over the world. There are plenty from UK, USA, Canada, Australia, New Zealand a fair few from Europe and some from South Africa. So far I’ve only found one from Japan (dancing in the street). Anyone know of SCD devised by Japanese dancers, or any other far flung places? Many thanks, Diana Sent from Mail for Windows 10
Dear Diana,
For Japan see the following collections -
"10th Anniversary Collection of SCD" by the Saitama Branch
and
"To Be A Wind" by the Tokyo Scottish Bluebell Club
and
"Happy Tartan" by Yuko Kondo.
Regards, Iain Boyd
Postal Address -
P O Box 11-404
Manners Street
Wellington 6142
New Zealand
From: Diana Hastie <xxxxx.xxxxxxxx@xxxxx.xxx>
To: Strathspey Mailing List <xxxxxxxxxx@xxxxxxxxxx.xxx>
Sent: Sunday, 25 February 2018 7:21 PM
Subject: Dances from around the world
Dear All,
I’m trying to come up with RSCDS published dances from all over the
world. There are plenty from UK, USA, Canada, Australia, New Zealand a
fair few from Europe and some from South Africa. So far I’ve only
found one from Japan (dancing in the street). Anyone know of SCD
devised by Japanese dancers, or any other far flung places?
Many thanks,
Diana
Sent from Mail for Windows 10
A search on the https://my.strathspey.org/dd/person/827/ server for Tom Toriyama, a member of the Tokyo Branch, shows 9 dances that he has devised, including "Dancing in the Street" published in RSCDS Book 42. It also lists his dances published in the the 10th Anniversary Collection of the Tokyo Branch and the Primrose Collection of the Urawa SCD Group. Marjorie McLaughlin San Diego CA
Marjorie McLaughlin wrote:
> A search on the https://my.strathspey.org/dd/person/827/ server for Tom
> Toriyama, a member of the Tokyo Branch, shows 9 dances that he has devised,
> including "Dancing in the Street" published in RSCDS Book 42. It also
> lists his dances published in the the 10th Anniversary Collection of the
> Tokyo Branch and the Primrose Collection of the Urawa SCD Group.
It's not just Tom. There seems to be a fairly prolific dance-devising scene in
Japan but their output is currently sadly underrepresented in the Society's
published repertoire.
Anselm
--
Anselm Lingnau, Mainz, Germany ......................... xxxxxx@xxxxxxxxxx.xxx
If you're hiking the wilderness and hunting for once-in-a-lifetime wildlife
photographs, remember that wildlife has the word “wild” in it for a reason.
-- Michael Zhang, “Hiker in Alaska Killed After Taking
Close-Up Pictures of a Grizzly Bear”
I served on the RSCDS Management Board for three years, and my main objective was to learn about Society processes. I was unable to gain insight for how dances are selected for publication. I imagine there exists some bias toward cultures that are familiar to Society leaders. I was recently interested to read an article on the RSCDS website about the Virtual Festival project. https://www.rscds.org/article/virtual-festival The organizers are looking for dance performances with themes from "Around the World". Participants will film a video of their performance, and the videos will be judged by three judges. This might signal an improvement from the process that has been used to select RSCDS dances. Tom Halpenny Vancouver WA USA
Tom Halpenny wrote: > I served on the RSCDS Management Board for three years, and my main > objective was to learn about Society processes. I was unable to gain > insight for how dances are selected for publication. Picking dances for new books comes under the purview of the RSCDS Membership Services Committee. You might have asked me, I would have been happy to explain the process we have been using for the last few books. > I imagine there exists > some bias toward cultures that are familiar to Society leaders. Having recently completed the selection of dances for Book 52, I would like to state that dances were trialled both by RSCDS branches and affiliated group and at the final dance-through in Edinburgh with no reference as to their authorship or geographical provenance. We looked at the countries of origin of dance devisors during the final selection of 12 dances for the book but only with a view to ensuring as diverse a spread as we could within the short-list of dances that were deemed eligible for publication based on their choreographic appeal. Anselm -- Anselm Lingnau, Mainz, Germany ......................... xxxxxx@xxxxxxxxxx.xxx Thousands of years ago the Egyptians worshiped cats as gods. Cats have never forgotten this. -- Charles Herbig
Thank you, Anselm, for the explanation of the dance selection process. I came up with an expectation of 7 dances selected from Japan for books 41 through 51, based on the Japan fraction of total RSCDS members, all other factors being equal. Compared with 1 dance selected in book 42. I am curious whether Scottish dancers from Japan who are strathspey list readers have any insight why Japan Scottish dance devisors might be proportionately less successful to submit dances that are potentially selected? Assume the number of selected dances proportional to relative number of members. Japan has three branches with 2017 membership: 640 = 239 Tokyo + 228 Tokai + 173 Saitama. Total branches membership = 11621. Japan branches are 5.5% of branches membership. Looked at years when Japan branches were founded: 1984 Tokyo , 1997 Tokai , 2001 Saitama. So consider only RSCDS books published after 2000. Books 41 through 51 published 128 dances. Assume Japan membership proportion has been consistent over the period. Expectation 7 dances from Japan = 5.5% x 128 dances. Tom
Tom Halpenny wrote: > So consider only RSCDS books published after 2000. Books 41 through 51 > published 128 dances. > Assume Japan membership proportion has been consistent over the period. > Expectation 7 dances from Japan = 5.5% x 128 dances. There are two issues with that hypothesis. 1. It assumes that the “density” of newly devised dances per RSCDS member that are available for the RSCDS to publish is the same across the world, which is not necessarily true (not all the prolific dance devisers in Japan might be members of the Society, or they might be embarrassed to submit their product for evaluation, which given Japanese reservations about “losing face” may be a major confounding factor). 2. The actual process of getting dances in for evaluation and processing them differs from one RSCDS book to the next. Your “proportional” hypothesis carries some weight for “free-for-all” books with anonymous evaluation like Books 47, 48 or 52 where any RSCDS member is invited to submit a dance, but, e.g., Book 49 and (IIRC) Book 45 asked for at most one dance per *branch*, and there are way fewer branches in Japan than there are in the UK or USA. Also, while we did try to judge dances with as little concern about the identity and origin of their devisers as possible when preparing those books that I was connected with (starting with Book 48) I can't speak to the methodology of the earlier books. Anselm -- Anselm Lingnau, Mainz, Germany ......................... xxxxxx@xxxxxxxxxx.xxx Yes, people want compassion. You know what else they want? Treatments that actually work. -- Steven Novella, “Homeopathic Rant”
Yes indeed, I agree with the issues. Still, it is interesting to do
the comparison, and imagine the reasons, as you are doing, why the
relative number of published dances diverges from expected based on
proportional number of branch members.
Just for fun, I examined the devisor regions for all the dances in
books 41 through 51, after the year 2000, and generated the following
table for all regions.
Tom
Dances Dances Devisor
Published Expected Region
18 16 Australia - New Zealand
12 17 Canada
14 5 Europe
1 7 Japan
6 3 Rest of World
40 27 UK - England
1 2 UK - Northern Ireland
20 28 UK - Scotland
14 20 United States America
126 125 Total
Diana Hastie wrote: > Anyone know of SCD devised by Japanese dancers, or any other far flung > places? There's always The Laird of Milton's Daughter, which while it wasn't actually written by an Indian was at least written *in* India. Anselm -- Anselm Lingnau, Mainz, Germany ......................... xxxxxx@xxxxxxxxxx.xxx Usenet is like a herd of performing elephants with diarrhea -- massive, difficult to redirect, awe-inspiring, entertaining, and a source of mind-boggling amounts of excrement when you least expect it. -- Gene Spafford
Hi,Not Japan but what about Kandahar Reel?
Fran Smith , S Wales
On Sunday, 25 February 2018, 06:21:33 GMT, Diana Hastie
<xxxxx.xxxxxxxx@xxxxx.xxx> wrote:
Dear All,
I’m trying to come up with RSCDS published dances from all over the
world. There are plenty from UK, USA, Canada, Australia, New Zealand a
fair few from Europe and some from South Africa. So far I’ve only
found one from Japan (dancing in the street). Anyone know of SCD
devised by Japanese dancers, or any other far flung places?
Many thanks,
Diana
Sent from Mail for Windows 10