Each week, our entertainments reporter tries out a new activity. This time, Duncan Hall learns Scottish country dancing.
How to do: Scottish country dancing
WHEN I joined the Peterborough branch of the Royal Scottish Country Dance Society I was expecting Highland dancers dressed in kilts and leaping over crossed swords to the sound of the bagpipes.
But Scottish country dancing is nothing like this – in fact it was more closely related to the Peterborough Folk Dance Club I visited earlier this year, both in terms of the dances the members did and the warm welcome I received from them all.
The dancers do wear kilts and tartan for their two annual public dances, but in the main members dress in normal clothes with flat-soled shoes for their weekly practice sessions in St Marks Church Hall, off Lincoln Road.
The main difference between the Scottish country dancing club and folk dancing is the three types of dances they do.
The reel is a fast dance in four: four time, the jig is equally fast, but in six:eight time and the strathspey is a slower dance, unique to Scotland, with a very definite step which took more than a little while to pick up.
All of them are very regimented dances – meaning they are the same whichever club you happen to visit in the world.
As with the folk dance club, you chose a partner and then the group is walked through the dance by the leader of the group.
Leadership of the group in the Peterborough club is shared between three tutors who take charge for five or six-week blocks.
Leading the group on Tuesday was Maimie Clarkson, who shares the role with Rhoda Purcell and Robert Warburton.
She said: “It takes the emphasis off one person. We all have our own methods. We usually have a warm up, then sometimes a bit of step practice or concentrate on a specific formation.”
When I joined the group they were concentrating on formations involving corners – where dancers do combinations and figures with the person diagonally opposite them, rather than always with their partner.
I was joined by the very lovely Jan for my first dance the Fife Jig, and was soon being directed around from pillar to post to make sure I kept in step with all the other dancers.
You are not always moving in these sort of dances, often the hardest bit is keeping still while others are doing their bit.
But once the dances are broken down they are relatively easy, and you do get a great sense of achievement when you get a move right.
The second dance, An Autumn Gathering, was a strathspey dance, something much slower than any form of dancing I had done before, where rather than skipping along you had to slide on a beat and deliberately slow yourself down – a bit like the bride and her father have to do when they walk down the aisle at a wedding.
I found myself getting the basics fairly quickly, although the strathspey step itself dangled a little way out of my grasp. As long as I kept moving in the right places I generally found myself doing OK.
The group, which has been meeting since 1981, was very supportive, and I wasn’t the only newcomer there either.
There were a few more women in the group than men, meaning often the women had to don red sashes to take the male role – and occasionally had to remind their partner of their gender!
In terms of exercise I did find myself quite tired by the end of each dance – the turning and skipping in time wore you out more than you thought – but like all the best exercise you didn’t feel it at the time.
For each dance I switched partners, and within each dance you got to meet everyone in the group, even if it was just for a fleeting turn, making it a very sociable activity.
The group has links with other clubs in Stamford, Melton Mowbray, Sleaford, Huntingdon, Oakham, Kettering, Corby, Bourne, Leicester, Wisbech and King’s Lynn, many of which have been invited to the group’s dance next Saturday, at St John’s Hall, in Mayor’s Walk, Peterborough.
But the best place to go to give Scottish Country Dancing a try is their weekly meeting – and trust me, you won’t be disappointed!