The Plateau Scottish Country Dancers
Published Mon, Jul 27 2009 12:59 AM
Well, we’ve finished with the 63rd Annual Pacific Northwest Scottish Highland Games and Clan Gathering. As I predicted, it was indeed a lot of fun, although it was still rather warm weather (for here). The Plateau Scottish Country Dancers performed Saturday morning at 11:00 A.M. and joined with the other Scottish Country Dance organizations in the area on Saturday afternoon for a mass demonstration of Scottish Country Dancing. On Sunday, we danced at 11:00 A.M., 2:00 P.M., and 3:00 P.M.
I brought my video camera on Saturday and recorded our 11:00 A.M. session. We began with a dance called “Roaring Jelly.” This dance is a three couple set, and we ran it with two sets. Our group leader picked this dance because he liked the name. A commonly told tale says that “Roaring Jelly” actually refers to gelignite, an explosive that was used in the mining industry around the turn of the twentieth century. Fortunately, the dance didn’t explode. If you like the music for this one, there’s a free MP3 download available of the song, “Smash the Windows or; Roaring Jelly (J.F. Archer, Violin)” available.
The second dance we performed was called “Rothesay Rant.” This dance is a four couple square set, and you can see from it where some of Square Dancing gets its heritage. Where Square Dancing uses a caller to tell the dancers what to do, we whisper to each other and point…
The third dance we performed was “Sandy O’er the Lea,” a Strathspey. This type of dance is unique to Scottish Country Dancing, and might be considered the “Ballroom Dancing” of Scottish Country Dance. The slower, more elegant tempo of this dance makes it look fabulous. One us us got in front of the camera during this for a bit. Something similar (a spectator and a stroller) happens in the two videos after this one as well. Ah well, nothing’s perfect. Besides, there was another camera there, which you might call the official one. I brought mine so I could post this. Ron Lake brought his to record everything for us, and his camera had an angle that couldn’t be blocked by spectators.
Our fourth dance was one I’ve posted about before, “The Bees of Maggieknockater.” This is another dance we chose in part because we liked the name. It’s a fairly complex dance, with a lot of interweaving patterns. With this one, all it takes is one dancer out of line and the whole thing can fall apart. I think it looks a lot better with everyone in Scottish dress.
The final dance in our regular set was “The Reel of the 51st Division.” This dance was developed by Scottish prisoners of war during World War II. When they sent the dance instructions home to Scotland, the Germans thought that they contained a secret code. The dance is traditionally performed by all male sets, and uses high cuts. Co-ed groups are doing the dance now, and most of us aren’t quite athletic enough to manage the high cuts. Mike and Caitlin are though, so they did them to show the audience what the dance should look like.
I noted earlier that we also performed a demonstration set during the “mass Scottish Country Dancing” demonstration on Saturday afternoon. This was done out on the main field at the fairgrounds and featured all of the various Scottish Country Dance groups in attendance. We performed a medley consisting of abbreviated forms of three dances – “Good Hearted Glasgow”; “Sandy O’er the Lea”; and “The Reel of the 51st Division.” That went off well, but I don’t have any video of that to share. There really wasn’t any time, or place, to set up the video camera.
All in all, the games were a lot of fun for us. We’re taking the rest of the summer off, and our group gets started again on September 14th at the Danish Hall in Enumclaw. If you live anywhere near the area, come out and join us. Once we start up again, we’ll be dancing every Monday night with few exceptions until the 64th annual Pacific Northwest Highland Games and Clan Gathering. It’s a lot of fun, and good exercise too. To contact the Plateau Scottish Country Dancers, just fill out this form on their website.
All videos copyright © 2009 by Perri D. Nelson. All rights reserved.
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Perri Nelson responded with: Video sizes and transfer speed.
 | If you have trouble viewing the videos, try starting them and then immediately pausing them until the video downloads completely. Then, when you start it up again it should play without interruption. In an effort to get reasonably high quality, I didn't cut the file sizes as much as I probably should have. |
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