Highland dance

It was created from the Gaelic folk dance repertoire, but formalised with the conventions of ballet,[2] and has been subject to influences from outside the Highlands.

Ritualistic and combative dances that imitated epic deeds and martial skills were a familiar feature in Scottish tradition and folklore.

The passage regards Alexander III and his second marriage to the French noblewoman Yolande de Dreux at Jedburgh on 14 October 1285.

When it looked as if he was disappearing from everyone's sight, the whole frenzied procession halted, the song died away, the music faded, and the dancing contingent froze suddenly and unexpectedly.In 1573, Scottish mercenaries are said to have performed a Scottish sword dance before the Swedish King, John III, at a banquet held in Stockholm Castle.

The dance, 'a natural feature of the festivities', was used as part of a plot to assassinate the King, where the conspirators were able to bare their weapons without arising suspicion.

There have been numerous female World Champions crowned at the Cowal Highland Gathering since they began organising the competition in 1948.

[citation needed] This feminisation of folk arts is a common pattern in the process of their 'gentrification', especially after they no longer serve a functional role in a male-centred, warrior culture.

Canada's Glengarry Highland Games on the other hand is one of the largest dancing and piping events on the North American calendar.

Similarly, Championships where set steps must be danced are often held inside sports centres across Scotland due to the space needed for the number of dancer.

For example, two character dances, The sailor's hornpipe and the Irish jig gained popularity in music hall and vaudeville productions.

A more practical explanation behind the meaning of this dance can be found in the training halls of older styles of fencing, where students of the sword developed their footwork by following geometric patterns of crosses, squares and triangles marked out on the floor.

Many of the Highland dances now lost to us were once performed with traditional weapons that included the Lochaber axe, broadsword, targe, dirk, and flail; the old Skye dancing song, Buailidh mi thu anns a' cheann (Scottish Gaelic for 'I will strike your head') indicate some form of weapon play to music; "breaking the head" was the winning blow in cudgelling matches throughout Britain, "for the moment that blood runs an inch anywhere above the eyebrow, the old gamester to whom it belongs is beaten, and has to stop".

This may derive from the folklore often surrounding warrior culture, but the style of the dance was changed by the Maclennan brothers of Fairburn.

The shield would have a spike in the middle, around which the dancer would do the dance that involves flicking of the feet, jumping and careful stepping supposedly to drive evil spirits away.

Leaving aside the obvious difficulty of dancing around a sharpened spike on a shield, a much more plausible theory is that the Highland Fling is none other than a Foursome Reel with the progressive bits left out - at social gatherings, dancers would 'compete' by showing off the fancy solo steps they could perform, long before formal competitions at highland games had been invented.

[14] Ruidhle Thulaichean (anglicised as 'reel of Tulloch') is supposed to have originated in the churchyard of Tullich, Aberdeenshire, where the congregation awaited the late minister.

[15][16] A more gruesome version of the story is that the dance derives from a rough game of football that the inhabitants of Tulloch played with the severed head of an enemy; the Gaelic words to the tune bear this out.

The seann triubhas means 'old trousers' in Gaelic and is romantically associated with the repeal of the proscription of the kilt by the government after the failed Jacobite Uprising of 1745.

At competitions, the national dances include the Scottish Lilt, Flora MacDonald's Fancy, the Earl of Errol, Blue Bonnets, Heilan' Laddie, the Barracks Johnnie, the Scotch Measure, and the Village Maid which illustrate the history of dancing and other aspects of Scottish culture and history.

The Earl of Errol, for example, is based on an 18th-century percussive hard-shoe footwork, although today's Highland dancers perform it in soft Ghillies.

[3] The hornpipe mimics a sailor in Royal Navy doing work aboard ship: hauling rope, sliding on the rollicking deck, and getting his paycheck, and has quite a lot of detail involved that portrays the character (e.g. the dancer does not touch his palms, assumed to be dirty, on his uniform).

They are named: Aberdonian lassie, Blue Bonnets, Over the Water to Charlie, Tulloch gorm (or gorum), flowers of Edinburgh, Scotch measure (twa'some), and first of August.

Men wear a traditional Scottish bonnet (cap) in either the Balmoral or less often the Glengarry style, and a doublet of black or coloured velvet or cloth.

If this jacket is in the Prince Charlie style, then it is to be accompanied by a shirt and bow tie with a waistcoat (vest), cummerbund, or belt.

A fly plaid (a narrow tartan shoulder cape of sorts) is usually no longer worn for male dancing.

Aboyne dresses (see below) have become more common in the recent years as general female dancewear (especially in North America), though this again varies by association or other rules-making body.

Early-20th-century photographs also show that there was once a wider array of dress or skirt styles (sometimes fairly long), as well as use of the full plaid, decorative bonnets, and other accessories that are no longer typically in dance use.

Alternatively, they may wear the increasingly popular Aboyne dress, which consists of a velvet bodice joined to a knee-length tartan skirt (which differs from a kilt in being pleated all the way around, without a flat front); it is worn over a white blouse and white underskirts, and a matching tartan plaid is usually pinned at the right shoulder and hangs down the back.

Depending on the rules-making body, skin-coloured tights or white socks may be permitted instead of coloured ones that match the tartan.

Females may wear one of several combinations of red, green and white blouses, dresses, skirts and cummerbunds.