WHEN I was a wean, education in Scotland had, since time immemorial, been defined by dichotomy. You may be mistaken in thinking that the most divisive axis of educational apartheid was cleaved on the Christian divide: the Catholic schools against the non-denominational schools. It wasn't. You could be forgiven for believing that the fundamental fissure was to be found between the fee-paying and the state schools. Again, you’d be wrong. The crucial chasm, yawning, dividing, bisecting Scottish youth in the 1970s was defined by dancing. Some schools taught dance (ballroom, de rigeur/Scottish traditional, optional). Others did not.
I was at a non-dance school. (Let’s face it, being able to translate Latin mottos is of far more practical use than being able to strip any willow.) My best pals frae the Bishy days, Beep and Suky, learnt the girl-meeting joys of ballroom with a couple of trad Scottish jigs and reels thrown in. (I was sent to the Washington Arts Centre every weekend to learn Bhangra, a dance that always got me noticed on a Thursday night at the Sub Club.)
I’ll never forget hearing the boys’ vivid, venal stories from a fulsome Friday spent at The Plaza Ballroom doon the Viccy Road. But that was decades ago. The Plaza closed in 1995 and the stories ceased some years before that.
I can recite Burns; I can sing traditional songs; I can watch a South African rugby referee ensure Scotland snatch an ignominious defeat from the jaws of an improbable victory. But I cannae dance. My Gordon will never be gay. The most my White Sergeant will do is walk briskly. My reel will always be some way short of the full eight.
There’s nothing sexier than the wilful, powerful, gloriously gay whirling, twirling, jigging and reeling of a ceilidh. And while George Michael might think guilty feet have no rhythm, ceilidhs are guilt-free hoolies of happiness for those that partake. Alas, I am not one. Ceilidhs will always see me cowering in a corner, self-consciously reciting Latin mottos.
So it is with great joy I hear that the Royal Scottish Country Dance Society is mounting a be-kilted campaign to have country dancing included in the school curriculum. This is most exciting.
I say here, I say now: I will be the first in the ceilidh class queue.
Given the success of St Ninian's Primary School, Stirling's pioneering "daily mile" scheme to get children active, there’s no reason why Scottish country dancing couldn't have the same health and fitness benefits. But the introduction of our national dance into schools is part of a bigger arc of self-confidence Scotland has been experiencing since devolution.
I remember coming home frae that big London in the noughties and being blown away by how many Glasgow pubs had live, traditional music nights. (I always thought it either a west coast coothie thing or for Edinburgh tourist traps.) What was most heartening was the youth of the musicians. Teenagers sat beside older women and men, and made music; made our music.
The Scottish folk music scene has never been more vibrant. The queen of the English folk scene, Eliza Carthy, spent a decade in Scotland, living and working. We have some of the most highly regarded musicians around.
And maybe, one day, we could feel the same about our dancers.
It always astonished me that at school we learnt 10 times more Shakespeare than Burns; more Milton than Spark. Further back in our history we were subjected to a law that stopped our citizens wearing their national dress, shortly after Gaelic was banned. While this may have been centuries ago, the legacy of this legal limitation lives on.
To have witnessed the resurgent, quietly confident and the more mature Scotland emerge from the country of my childhood has been a thing of beauty. Dancing, like music, poetry and literature, our arts, are in many ways what define us as Scottish.
While modern Scotland must remain outward-looking, we must also maintain a sense of the inward. We must teach our children our history; all of our history.
But right now I’m most excited about my own dance journey. I promise you, there will be no gayer Gordon than the Punjabi Weegie boy frae Bishy.
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