[This is slightly unfair because as the Strathspey list maintainer I
need to `approve' your postings since you don't subscribe to the list.
So I get the chance to answer before anybody else on Strathspey ... - A.]
The four-people Highland Reel is only one of a whole family of dances
that employ the general pattern of alternately setting to somebody
(meaning, doing complicated steps in place while facing another person)
and `progressing' on a track, which in the simplest case can be a kind
of circle; in the Highland Reel it is a figure of eight with an extra
loop added to it like `ooo'. (Ask your dancers to show it to you
slowly.) This track (confusingly also called a `reel', specifically a
`reel of four' since four dancers are involved) takes eight bars of
music to complete, after which the dancers set to the person opposite
for eight bars using whatever tricky steps they fancy. Then they
progress again, and set again, and so on until the fiddler (or piper)
decides that it is time for a drink. At least this is how they used to
do it in the highlands of Scotland (as far as we know) before they
learned how to do country dances.
The Highland Reel doesn't have an actual fixed tune. Usually what people
do is they start out in strathspey time (i.e., slowish) and then speed
up either all at once (this is the `competitive' style as seen in dance
events at highland games and the like, where the dance is called the
Strathspey and Highland Reel) or gradually (this is the `Cape Breton'
style and therefore more likely to be the way things used to be done in
the Scottish highlands in days of yore) up to reel speed. You can use
pretty much any strathspey tune followed by a suitable reel tune; if
you're looking for printed music then any of the first three volumes of
`Kerr's Collection of Merry Melodies', one of the standard collections
of traditional Scottish dance music, will give you as much of a choice
as you could possibly want and more. As far as I know, the done thing in
Cape Breton is to play a strathspey tune (say, The Laird of Drumblair,
by J. Scott Skinner) and then speed this up until you play the same tune
as a reel (which in the case of the Laird of D. is called Angus
Campbell, surprisingly enough also credited to Scott Skinner), but this
isn't actually required.
If you're interested in the history of social dancing in Scotland, try
to locate a copy of `Traditional Dancing in Scotland', by T.M. and
J.F.Flett, published by Routledge & Kegan Paul. This is the standard
scholarly work on the topic.
You may send the chocolate to Anselm Lingnau, Schwanheimer Strasse 66,
60528 Frankfurt, Germany.
Anselm
--
Anselm Lingnau .......................................... [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Human attention may be the ultimate scarce resource.
-- Andrew M. Odlyzko, *Internet pricing and the history of communications*
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