According to tradition, the old kings and chiefs of
Scotland, used Highland dancing as a way of choosing men for their
retinue and men at arms. Dancing was one of the ways men were tested on
agility, strength, stamina and accuracy. Scottish regiments used
Highland Dancing as exercise to keep the troops in shape, and ready for
battle. The dances are indeed excellent exercise; for example, in a
typical six-step Highland Fling, a dancer will jump vertically 192 times
(the equivalent of running a mile), while performing complicated and
intricate footwork, and using the muscles from head to toe. Highland
dancing is therefore akin to sprinting, with dancers using fast-twitch
muscle, which is also required by soldiers. The regiments did not just
dance six steps they danced upwards of 20 steps in one dance! The leaps
were said to be used to leap over a sword trust at their heart. iginally only men were allowed to do these dances, but in the late
19th century a 10 year old girl, Jenny Douglas, decided to enter a
Highland dance competition. As this was not expressly forbidden, she was
allowed to enter. It was a shock for everyone when the first female
Highland Dancer took to the platforms to do battle with the men. She
made so much of an impact on the scene, dressed exactly as the men, that
shortly afterwards other ladies took up the idea and the seed was sown.
Initially, women were expected to appear in the same cumbersome outfit
as their male counterparts - kilt, doublet, plaid and sporran - a vast
difference from today’s light-weight outfit that is designed with the
dancer’s comfort and ease of movement in mind.
They adopted the look of a male soldier, with military dress and with
their hair pulled up and off the neck in a high bun or a French braid.
This also gave the dancer a clear view, allowing them to maintain the
correct body alignment throughout the dance. Later during the World
Wars, women began dancing more often desiring to preserve their rich
culture and history, while the men were defending their homeland. Since
then the number of females participating in the sport has increased
until today in excess of 95% of all competition dancers are female.
In 1952, the Aboyne Games sponsored a more feminine costume for girls
based on seventeenth and eighteenth century Highland dress for women as
seen in portraits of Flora MacDonald. Ladies’ dances such as Flora
MacDonald’s Fancy, the Scottish Lilt, and the Village Maid, were
introduced to the repertoire as ‘national dances’, to offer hand
movements where ladies would hold their skirts and, above all, more
feminine dances using a softer, more balletic style rather than the more
military style used by the earlier male dancers.
So, we can be proud that a Douglas led the way in highland dancing, as
in so many other fields.
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