The Way We Were
by Pat Beaven
Reprinted from Highland Dancer Magazine
Our Canadian summer – then, as now – months of weekends filled with Highland Games, and seasonal testing-ground of the competitive Highland dancer. A day spent recently at the provincial dance championships occasioned many thoughts and reminiscences – it was a mixture of easy familiarity and mild shocks and surprises. I used to compete… forty years ago! Following, a purely subjective view of how things have changed in that nearly half-century…
The first thing noticably different is the costume. For males (still very much in the minority – not much change there!), dress is essentially the same. But for females… very changed! I danced in the era just preceding competition coming under the jurisdiction of ‘the Board’, the Scottish Official Board of Highland Dancing. The S.O.B.H.D. was set up to stabilize technique and formulate regulations covering every aspect of the dance. The Board decreed the end of several costume items for girls: plaid, sporran, flashes, and bonnet. The current outfit is more streamlined and easier to dance in: no bulky plaid or sporran bobbing up and down, no heavy gormstone brooch pulling back the shoulder of your jacket, no hat to pin on and hope it stayed put. One doesn’t have to suffer dancing in the blistering July sun in the long-sleeved velvet jacket that was de rigeur in 1960; dancers have a choice of jacket or vest with elbow-length white blouse. Hose seem untouched, although we wore coloured flashes to brace them up, and ghillies are still ghillies, but have gone high-tech with arch supports and sole pads that promise to “absorb up to 85% of impact”. Hair is now gelled back and always in a neat bun; we wore our hair as we pleased, often down and swinging, although out hats – glengarries or balmorals – helped control its movement.
As for the kilts – there’s not the wild swirl of clan tartans we saw in the 50’s and 60’s. Today’s kilts are checkered with large areas of white plus mainly red or blue or green, the white supposedly for a higher visibility. Back then, we considered yellow the “look-at-me!” colour, and MacLeod and Buchanan were favourites on stage. Jackets were almost always black, with a lace jabot and lace at the wrists. The (very) occasional coloured jacket was sure to cause a stir – as if we didn’t expect velvet came in other shades – I recall being able to pick out June Dunford from the other end of the field because of her green jacket! Now red, blue, and green predominate, with a handful of mauve and even dusty rose thrown in… and once in a while, maybe a black. Suspenders hold up kilts everywhere (why didn’t we think of this?), and “minimal-bounce bras” are a common accessory. And when did the kilt pin become a thing of the past? Its absence certainly allows for a cleaner line when certain steps are performed.
Though Fling, Swords, Seann Truibhas, and Reel still make up the core of competition, events no longer include the Sailor’s Hornpipe or the Irish Jig. Dancers can now register, however to compete in things like Lilt, Blue Bonnets, and Pas de Bas and Hi’Cuts. Required steps have changed under Board regulations, although the number of slow and quick remains about the same. Style too has changed , in part I imagine due to the influence of the Board, and partly just because things come in and go out of vogue in any art form. It seems somehow that ours was a kinder, gentler style of dance – not such emphasis, for instance, on showy,exaggerated high-cutting, pronounced beating of the back foot in the pas de bas, or holding of poses for that second or two after the jump that ends the Seann Truibhas (we did two jumps to fill that beat). Style, hmmm… when I competed, a ripple of amazement went through the crowd when the odd entrant clapped on the last beat before quick steps instead of twice on the first two beats of the quick… how very exotic we thought!
Throughout the day, some things were notable by virtue of not having changed. Sitting on a variety of fold-up lawn chairs and camp stools or presiding over picnic baskets, parents and teachers study performances intently, pointing out corrections and offering ‘helpful’ reminders. On the perimeter, parents still encourage and observe practice when dancers aren’t on stage – although now practice is done on those ubiquitous colourful interlocking foam mats that provide a smart portable dance floor. Dancers continue to wait around, relax, and warm up in various states of dress/undress, but now Adidas snap-open pants and Nike Airs complete the half-costumed look… in my time it was cardigans and penny loafers. Dancers still keep an eye on the competition, recognizing and trading comments about who’s been taught by whom, easily discerned by give-away signature points of style and technique: using arms when turning in the fling, for example, or waiting until the music starts to put arms in first position. When on stage, dancers’ faces reflect a whole range of emotions, from lip-biting and the semi-scowl of concentration to lofty indifference, and everything in between. I believe we must have been encouraged to smile more, hoping this might gain us points in deportment for showing what the original Board textbook called “pleasure in the dance”. The teary-eyed stare straight ahead when a dancer must step out of the sword dance to disqualify herself, and the smile of achievement and relief just after the finishing bow were both very familiar.
“Plus ca change”, as the saying goes, “plus ca c’est la meme chose.” For the Highland dancer, today’s competitions are yesterday’s traditions reasserting themselves, altered and added to. Not a postscript to a great tradition I was part of forty years ago, but an integral, living part of the continuum!