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firstfootingscotland · 6 years ago

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Bogha-frois Conversations: Joseph Peach

Early this year during Glasgow’s Celtic Connections Festival I had the pleasure of joining a host of incredible LGBT+ artists for a performance and a panel around the theme of Bogha-frois: LGBT+ Voices in Folk. A brainchild of Pedro Cameron (Man of the Minch), Bogha-frois began as a workshop at the Scottish Storytelling Centre and takes its name from the Gaelic word for “rainbow.” The energy around Bogha-frois has enacted a metamorphosis - far beyond a standalone workshop, panel, or critically-acclaimed gig, Bogha-frois is a movement celebrating gender and sexual diversity within traditional and folk music, song, and dance in Scotland. Following the events in Glasgow, I wanted to continue these conversations and proposed a series of monthly blog posts. It’s hope this series will be a place for dialogue around the intersections of traditional arts, identity, and each artists’ path as a LGBT+ person. Our final Bogha-frois conversationalist is Joseph Peach!

Tell me a story... what was a moment when you felt both your identity as a traditional musician and your identity as a LGBTQIA+ person were in focus? (1)

This is such a rare thing, so far at least. Until very recently, I haven't really seen even that a meeting of these two aspects of myself might be necessary, or indeed possible. The Bogha-frois gig at Celtic Connections was certainly one of these times though, it was an amazing and beautiful celebration. I was really surprised by how profoundly moving it felt to be part of a big group of LGBTQIA+ folkies playing music together, and for this aspect of our identities to be what had brought us there. Thinking about it, music- traditional music in particular, has so far been the biggest factor in making my identity, far more than the fact of being an LGBTQIA+ person. I think that's for a couple of reasons. I've been playing music since before I can remember, but I've only been aware and accepted that I was gay for a comparatively short amount of time. I've found understanding and reconciling this fact to be a process that is much more complex, and definitely still ongoing. To me, being a musician is everything: It's a passion, art, creating, a purpose in life, and way of life. If it was only a job, I'd be doing something else like practicing law, and being paid far more to work far more regular hours. More than ever before, the past few years have been a time of discovery creatively; finding worlds of artists and work to listen to, read, see and watch; things to admire, and be moved and inspired by. They have also been a time of doing more learning, playing, and making music. And what I’m really starting to understand, from work that inspire me, and the work that I make, is that for this whole notion of doing something like this only works if everything feeds in quite unfiltered. In a very roundabout way, I guess what I'm trying to say is that as getting comfy with the LGBTQIA+ aspect of myself continues, that of course there needs to be much more space and consideration for these two identities overlap.

How do you identify? What are the pronouns, descriptors or other words you like to use, if any, to describe yourself in regard to your LGBTQIA+ status.

I'm a (mostly) gay, cisgendered man I suppose, and the pronouns I use are he/him/his.

(photo of Joseph Peach by Somhairle MacDonald)

Talk about your perceptions of LGBTQIA+ identity (both yours and others) within your experience playing traditional music in Scotland.

Perception, especially self-perception is something I find very hard. I'm prone to being quite negative in how I see myself, and massively overthinking (usually in a negative way) my own notion of how other people see me- as a musician, person, and everything else. This is probably going to be a bit of a left field (and very long) answer, but relevant I think. It’s quite telling that when first reading the question that my mind immediately went towards anxiety. I think that for me, so much of what causes and triggers anxiety is to do with being a musician, and being gay. So, the musician thing. To me it is such a deeply personal thing, playing an instrument. How and why you do it is something wrapped up in the very fabric of you. And the nature of doing it for a living is one of always putting yourself out there- putting this really personal thing in all sorts of situations where people can hear and judge it. This is a bit terrifying sometimes, and it becomes a challenge not to be totally overwhelmed by the swirling thoughts that come with thinking about it too much- mainly that I’m doing a shit job, and that the people around me can see and hear that. This can present a major problem, but thankfully not all of the time. One of the things I love the most about the bands and collaborators with which I’m most regularly and seriously involved, are the levels of friendship, support, understanding, and trust which make these emotions fade in to the background, and make the space to focus on the things that are actually important. It’s all a question of perspective about perception I think, and there’s a real challenge in that.

And the gay thing. To my knowledge, there’s never been a better time to be LGBTQIA+, and arguably, in terms of rights, protection, and legislation, you’d struggle to find a better place than Scotland. Sadly, you don't have to look too far, to see very present, worrying and heartbreaking examples where being LGBTQIA+ is literally a threat to your life. So I’m extremely lucky to be where I am, when I am. In the great scheme of things though this comfort and protection is a very recent thing. Even in this progressive country we’re emerging from centuries of this sort of otherness being feared and abhorred- an abomination and illegal; something society said to be ashamed of. Thankfully, for all sorts of reasons that I really don’t know enough about, it feels that as society we’re moving away from this pretty quickly, and have been for a while. But certainly when I was growing up (and I’m sure being from a small rural place is part of it), I always had the impression that being some form of LGBTQIA+, (probably not described in such sympathetic terms) was something to be ashamed of. I was told that, saw it in the complete absence of any such people in the community, and heard it in the way such folk were talked about. Of course it’s a problem far bigger than that specific place. A problem it’s hard to see an end to until we stop raising children to expect that they’ll be straight and cisgendered.

I’m really interested in the Suzuki method. Much of it is based on the notion that it is possible to learn music in the same deeply natural way one learns their native language- by immersion, observation and impersonation. And it's so true- we do learn our first language like this. As a child, you become an expert in speaking your language through this deep and unconscious process. By this same principle, I managed to pick up a whole bunch of shame about being gay. My teenage years were spent agonizing about it, resenting it, and feeling quite isolated because of it; worrying about how others would see me, and tying myself in knots about how I saw myself. These things are ongoing I suppose- it's a lot to unlearn. The understanding and perspective that time and learning brings are hugely helpful, but working on my perception of myself in this way is definitely also still a work in progress.

vimeo

(trailer for Joseph’s forthcoming record Air Iomall with fiddler Charlie Grey made in collaboration with filmmaker Hamish Macleod)

In what ways do you feel your identity as a LGBTQIA+ person and a traditional musician intersect, overlap, engage?

I’m really attracted to music that's quite absolute, just existing to be a wee world of its own, on its own terms, and that makes you go fuck, that’s amazing as an entity in its own right, not as an abstraction of something else. To me that’s lots of piano music, classical things, electronic things, and of course, much of traditional music.

My attitude until quite recently has been that it'd be hard to make any sort of explicit overlap between this sort of music and anything LGBTQIA+. If it is just music for its own sake, how can you make it queer, straight, or anything else for that matter? This is maybe the wrong way of looking at it though- if everything feeds in to music in some way, so being LGBTQIA+ must, even in small ways.

One place this is maybe quite concretely the case is in how I speak and move. It’s an idea that’s crossed my mind quite recently, when I was watching back a film that involves a lot of chat. I don’t often hear myself speak outside of my own head, so watching I was quite struck by how my voice sounded- it was quite camp. I don't mean that negatively- camp as an insult is bullshit from a toxic notion of heteronormative masculinity.

And I notice it too when I see myself playing the piano, the same sort of campness. Granted, I think being quite anxious can make me pretty hyper-aware, so maybe it's not so obvious to other folk. But playing music is a physical thing, so it’s maybe actually really nice that there are ways using my body to do that, or my voice to speak about it that come from an LGBTQIA+ identity. Noticing and valuing these small things already feels like something quite profound.

Talk about your experience connecting with other LGBTQIA+ folks both inside and outside the traditional arts.

I'm extremely lucky in the community around me in Glasgow- I feel very part of something musically and socially. For me, connecting with LGBTQIA+ people is never something I've really consciously sought out- as with everyone else, it just happens over the course of day to day life. Other than accidentally ending up at Pride in Vienna a few years ago, and deliberately going to the Glasgow one once, the Bogha-frois gig was the only time really I’ve been involved in a gathering centered around LGBTQIA+ identity, and certainly a first time it’s been about music. And there was something unexpectedly and completely amazing about that.

If you’re comfortable sharing, talk about any incidents of homophobia or transphobia that you’ve witnessed both inside and outside the traditional arts.

I've been very lucky, sheltered, or possibly both in how little of this I’ve experienced, to my face at least. Within the scene within which I live and work, it's barely ever more than some off-colour jokes. When I was young, I think there was a lot of homophobic language, in school and in the community in which I lived- again this rarely amounted to more than off-colour jokes, but sometimes you’d know the sentiment was serious.

In all honesty, the worst homophobia I've experienced was probably levelled at me by me, during the younger years of coming to terms with my sexuality. That feels like quite a drastic thing to write, and when I think back to that time my inclination is to downplay it, but this is definitely no overstatement.

How do you see the traditional arts changing in regard to LGBTQIA+ people? What are the further changes you would like to see?

Malin Lewis said something really interesting in their answer to this question, about a link between some of what we’re talking about here, and the much needed discussion around women in traditional music that's been a big topic in trad scene over the past couple of years. My mind was really blown when the conversation started a couple of years ago. I had so little idea of the privilege I was enjoying in comparison to my female counterparts. It was quite an eye opener in a much wider way towards the workings of privilege in the world around us. It's kind of everywhere- systemic and entrenched societally, but also very individual- on the scales of privilege and disadvantage we all win and lose in different ways. It's a bit of a fucked situation, and I don’t know what the answer is, but what I don't think helps is denial. I think the most useful thing, for our own folky world, but also in the widest possible way, is simply acknowledging the privileges you have, being aware that they might be what allows you to occupy your space, and that they might well create a barrier that prevents other folk from also occupying that space.

You can learn more about Joseph and his music at www.joseph-peach.com.

First Footing is a collaboration between dancer and dance researcher Nic Gareiss, the Traditional Dance Forum of Scotland, University of Edinburgh Moray House School of Education, and the School of Scottish Studies with support from Creative Scotland. For engagement opportunities check out the First Footing website.

(1) Following methodology developed by Fiona Buckland in her book Impossible Dance: Club Culture and Queer World-making, I began each conversation asking artists to tell me a story. This, Buckland reminds us, redistributes significance to the voice of the artist, rather than the anthropologist/researcher/interviewer. In Buckland’s words, “the meanings they made from the practices are more crucial than whatever meaning I impose with the theoretical tools in my standard issue doctoral utility belt.” (Buckland 2002, p. 11) This feels incredibly important when collaborating with folks whose voices have so often been underheard or marginalized.

#joseph peach #bogha-frois #lgbtq #lgbtqia #queer #piano #accordian #scotland #scottish traditional music #gaelic #charlie grey #rainbow #fiona buckland #trad #fiddle

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firstfootingscotland · 6 years ago

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Location announced for Sunday’s final Art of Treepling performance!

I’m elated to announce the location for Treepling in Performance, the final event of the Art of Treepling weekend! This Sunday, June 9, from 2-3 pm I’ll be joined by international percussive dance guest artists Sandy Silva and Colin Dunne, and School of Scottish Studies traditional artist-in-residence Mike Vass at the University of Edinburgh’s St. Leonard’s Land Dance Studios on Holyrood Road. Join us as we celebrate the end of this percussive dance mini-festival and the culmination of the First Footing Dance Residency!

#sandy silva #Colin dunne #mike vass #nic gareiss #St. Leonard's Land #Edinburgh #University of Edinburgh #Moray House School of Educatoin

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firstfootingscotland · 6 years ago

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Bogha-frois Conversations: Will Hammond

Early this year during Glasgow’s Celtic Connections Festival I had the pleasure of joining a host of incredible LGBT+ artists for a performance and a panel around the theme of Bogha-frois: LGBT+ Voices in Folk. A brainchild of Pedro Cameron (Man of the Minch), Bogha-frois began as a workshop at the Scottish Storytelling Centre and takes its name from the Gaelic word for “rainbow.” The energy around Bogha-frois has enacted a metamorphosis - far beyond a standalone workshop, panel, or critically-acclaimed gig, Bogha-frois is a movement celebrating gender and sexual diversity within traditional and folk music, song, and dance in Scotland. Following the events in Glasgow, I wanted to continue these conversations and proposed a series of monthly blog posts. It’s hope this series will be a place for dialogue around the intersections of traditional arts, identity, and each artists’ path as a LGBT+ person. This month’s Bogha-frois conversationalist is percussionist Will Hammond!

Tell me a story... what was a moment when you felt both your identity as a traditional musician and your identity as a LGBTQIA+ person were in focus? (1)

Obviously the Bogha-frois workshops and concert were a pretty decisive event for this. During those days it felt most apparent and explicitly like "this is what this is about, this is inextricably part of who we are and what we're doing", which did feel like the first time outside of maybe being at pride or a protest that I've felt quite so "out" and among similar people, and the only time where the musician part of my identity has been equally in focus. I'd had a few conversations with other queer musicians about navigating the world the ways we do prior to those workshops, and each time my thoughts of "I'm sure I'm not the only person" became "oh, wow there are other people experiencing these things!" So, to have so many people gathered for the workshops and concert laid out this confirmation on a scale that was very affirming.

How do you identify? What are the pronouns, descriptors or other words you like to use, if any, to describe yourself in regard to your LGBTQIA+ status.

I'm bisexual, in that I am capable of being attracted to people of more than one gender. My own gender is a total mess and I use he/him pronouns but they/them pronouns are fine, kind of whatever, really. Genderfluid and nonbinary are terms that fit; I don't think I really know what I "identify" as on an that instinctive visceral level. If I introspect on it, I always come out thinking "I don't know what feeling like a man or a woman or anything else feels like, I just feel a bit unpleasant." I find personally trans/cis is a pretty quirky binary in itself. "Do you agree with the doctor who said 'it's a boy' when you were born?", I mean, I guess, yeah sometimes but also sometimes not, right?

(percussionist Will Hammond, photo by Amelia Read)

Talk about your perceptions of LGBTQIA+ identity (both yours and others) within your experience playing traditional music in Scotland.

When I've played in Scotland my own and others' identities have either gone unmentioned and un-talked about or they've been the focus of the event- referring to the Bogha-frois concert, so my experience has either been extremely welcoming and accepting or I haven't had to think about it. Being English and mostly working in England, I don't expect my experiences of this in Scotland to be comprehensive or universal for Scottish musicians.

In what ways do you feel your identity as a LGBTQIA+ person and a traditional musician intersect, overlap, engage?

I am fairly open to talking about my queerness with other people I play music with, and most of these people, if they are not themselves lgbtq in some ways, have usually demonstrated that I can trust them about it. Ever since I first read about it I've enjoyed exploring the idea of music as a verb rather than a noun. I also like the line of thought leading off about how a musician who is just walking down the street, or making a cup of coffee, or trying to get to sleep, is still a musician. Even if what they are doing in those moments is not musicking, their musician-ness has affected how they experience and interact with the world. I think, for myself, I can draw definite parallels to my queerness in here. How applicable that is for other people is totally up to them, of course. At the moment I have "trans rights are human rights" written in block capitals down the side of one of my main instruments, and I don't exactly present as the most obviously straight person in the world, so I suppose I'm not trying particularly hard to keep my queerness and my musician-ness separate.

Talk about your experience connecting with other LGBTQIA+ folks both inside and outside the traditional arts.

I have worked a couple of times with other lgbtq artists in the trad scene and beyond, but prior to the Bogha-frois workshops it was never a specific condition or factor of us working together. It would emerge over the course of us practicing usually, or I already knew about the other(s) going in and would tell them about myself.

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A post shared by The Cusp (@thecuspmusic) on Apr 8, 2019 at 9:08am PDT

(Will’s band The Cusp with fiddler Imogen Bose-Ward and harpist Ada Francis)

If you’re comfortable sharing, talk about any incidents of homophobia or transphobia that you’ve witnessed both inside and outside the traditional arts.

In a performance context I haven't experienced any myself, which has been nice, but on at least two occasions during practices with other musicians, after coming out to them as bi they have immediately asked me about how open my partner and I are to threesomes. Outside of music, just in the last couple of years I've been called slurs in shops multiple times, in the loos at Newcastle railway station a man told me that I'm in the wrong queue and should be in the ladies'. I've been given "that look" by several men for being in public with other queer people. Once, someone I used to work for grabbed my wrist and tried to scrub off my nail varnish with her hand as if she thought that would work and was an acceptable way to treat another adult. I've certainly not had as hard a time as some people I know, but I have plenty of my own evidence for how marriage equality certainly didn't end homophobia, let alone transphobia.

How do you see the traditional arts changing in regard to LGBTQIA+ people? What are the further changes you would like to see?

I'm stuck with being a convert, a backslider, and a reformist with respect to trad music. I didn't get into folk until I was introduced by a friend. I was maybe 17, by which time I'd already been playing music in some form or other for about 9 years. Then playing, listening to, learning about, trad things became a focus until I was maybe 21, when I learned a bit more about abstract expressionism and free improvisation and started enjoying the weirder sides of trad playing more and the "regular" playing a bit less. It was partly burnout from having finished university but getting outside of the folk bubble having spent a short time intensely involved in it was definitely a breath of fresh air. The final project of my studies was a summary of this process in a way, looking at how genres are constructed in the modern age and how occupying the spaces between them can result in some interesting things. I'm fascinated in the ability to use this music to tell stories and preserve memories. I'm also aware of the parallel consequence that allows this music to distort realities and, through entirely benign inaction, forget. I hesitate to speak for the Scottish traditions as I'm only an occasional visitor, and in the words of Leon Rosselson, I'm not suggesting any sort of plot. However, there have been times I find it difficult to look at the amount of lighthearted crossdressing, not so lighthearted crossdressing, "shapeshifting", "enchantment", utter disinterest in marriage, and portrayals of homosocial relationships in traditional songs and not feel concern when these things are overlooked. Even more so when they are explained away in a manner that preserves the current cisheteropatriarchy like it's something that's always been there. The places this music comes from are important, and preserving it and celebrating it definitely is a worthy pursuit. It then follows that to gloss over the parts that don't fit our construction of history is partly what leads us to situations where it takes a whole room of queer musicians simply pointing out that we exist, maybe for ourselves as much as for an audience, to get people thinking about it. As such, and though I recognise that it's difficult to apply current terminology around sexuality and gender to historical time periods, "The Folk", whoever they were, ought to be perceived as less monolithically heterosexual and gender conforming. Applying this way of thinking and looking can go forwards as much as backwards, and achieving a greater diversity of voices in the trad scene is an important goal, I think.

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firstfootingscotland · 6 years ago

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On Islands and Improvisation

(View from the airport at Benbecula, Uist)

It looks as though we’re about to land on the beach as the small dual propeller plane wafts us over Uist. As we descend towards the runway, just a narrow strip of land from the water, I can see the island dotted with silvery lakes, the white sand turning to darker earth as you move inland, and the spine road of the island with its proprietary bulges. Later, I find myself very grateful my driver knows these passing places well as we careen towards the hall where I’ll be teaching step dance. We pull off to take in a quick view over the water, the place my hostess says has the best cell reception, and look west towards the sea, towards North America. Here, I get the sense that the island is what all are answerable to.

In the opening of her piece on gender and sexualities in traditional ballads, University of Winnipeg Women’s and Gender Studies professor Pauline Greenhill mentions both the literal and figurative transportive quality of islands:

“When I was a young woman, the Mariposa Folk Festival was an experience freedom and separation, requiring bus and subway travel from my parents' apartment in Don Mills, and then a ferry across Toronto Harbour to the Toronto Islands. To spend a sunny summer weekend away from the suburbs, surrounded by trees, water, and music was to be literally and figuratively transported to other historic and symbolic locations. It was probably at Mariposa that I first heard "transvestite," "warrior-maiden," "female-sailor," or, as I call them, cross-dressing ballads, likely sung by strong women folksong-revival performers…” (1)

For Greenhill, traveling to the Toronto Islands to hear traditional songs about warrior-maidens or cross-dressing sailors at the Mariposa Folk Festival allowed her to hear these ballads not only as conventional narratives of binary gender and heterosexuality, but also as somehow suggestive of other modes of being... Of other desires, other ways of existing outside of a presumed two-gender system; ways of life that are somehow queer, somehow beyond the limits of normative.

I’ve been thinking a lot about islands. Over the past seven months of the First Footing residency, I have had the pleasure of working on three different Scottish islands: Lismore for a weekend of music and dance workshops organized by Kae Sakurai, the Isle of Skye for a weeklong step dance course organized by Sabhal Mòr Ostaig, and South Uist for a weekend of classes for singers and dancers coordinated by Ceòlas. While each island presented its own ecological richness, I’ve been wondering broadly about the correlations of teaching, performing, and especially improvising on islands.

As long as I can remember I have made a habit of improvising in performance. In the weeks leading up to my first paid gig at the leafy Saline Celtic Festival still held annually in Michigan’s breezy early summer, I remember meticulously scribbling sequences of steps on many multicolored sticky notes. I adhered these to the dresser in my room so I could follow along as I practiced dancing. From my musician collaborators, I had received the names of the tunes that would be played, their meter (jigs, reels, hornpipes, etc.), and the number of times they were to be played. I noted all this information studiously. I so desperately wanted to be prepared.

However, when it came to rehearsing with the musicians for the show (Jeremy Kittel, Sean Gavin, and Michael Gavin), my folder of adhesive-backed paper couldn’t have seemed more arbitrary. Listening and responding felt so much more relevant, so much more useful. I abandoned my scrawled steps that day. Drawing from the footwork sequences in the moment, pulling steps from many percussive dance styles including Irish step dance, Canadian stepping, Appalachian clogging, and tap dance, I could better hear nuances of melody, timing, dynamic and phrasing than if I were actively working to recall a pre-arranged set of steps. (2) Perhaps I just didn’t rehearse my stickies enough. In any case, this way of creating dance has been at the center of my work ever since. Whether performing onstage with a band, teaching a workshop (its own kind of performance!), or presenting a solo dance show, I find myself returning to improvisation as a technique. Even when working alone in a studio in recent years, I tend to improvise, film the improvisation, and watch it back to see what worked and what didn’t. Sometimes I’ll forgo the camera and rely on mental notes as I’m dancing; mentally marking what feels interesting, what feels irrelevant, what feels pleasurable, and then trying to repeat, omit, expand upon this material on the next attempt. In performance, I’ve found this method of public extemporization allows me a tremendous amount of autonomy to respond to other bodies, to sound, to the haptic nature of my feet brushing the floor, and to the specifics of place as I perform.

I found myself improvising on all three of the Scottish islands I visited during my residency. On Lismore, Kae Sakurai and Mairi Campbell hosted a public acoustic show in the village hall with performances by weekend instructors and attendees. There, with the lights low, I found myself rising from my seat in the circle of chairs amidst islanders and students to dance with Mairi, Janet Lees, and Kath Bruce playing Kath’s stately tune, Albert’s 90th. Mine was the first dancing body to enter the circle, an act which felt imbued with its own symbolic magic. As the tune unfolded, I found myself tracing big shapes, hoping to usher in a sense of “eventfulness,” a term Irish queer theorist Michael O’Rourke once ascribed to my movement after seeing a performance. On Skye, Malin Lewis and Hamish Napier both invited to join them in the midweek concert at Sabhal Mòr Ostaig. With Malin, I donned tap shoes to accompany their highland pipes for a set of gleefully acrobatic original 7/8 compositions while with Hamish, I wore a softer pair of leather shoes and used sand to meet him in the breathy, sibilant soundscape of his whistle-playing and Innes Watson’s dexterous guitar work. On Uist, I presented a 45 minute solo performance that included improvisations, songs accompanied by dancing, dances accompanied by diddling, and percussive dance that needed no accompaniment at all. All of these performance situations relied on improvisation as a compositional strategy - a mode of danced connection to islanders and islands.

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A post shared by Sabhal Mòr Ostaig (@sabhalmorostaig) on Apr 10, 2019 at 9:18am PDT

(Hamish Napier, Innes Watson and I perform Hamish’s composition Huy Huy! at Sabhal Mòr Ostaig, filmed by Sophie Stephenson)

In a recent talk at Boyer College, dancer, dance scholar, and chair of African-American studies at Duke University Thomas F. DeFrantz articulates that there is queerness to the process of improvisation itself. He examines the act of improvising through the lens of black performance, especially jazz:

“That’s how jazz works. You have to be able to imagine outside of what happened before…and it’s going to be super queer to get to the place where it’s going to be interesting as an improvisation….queerness as I’m trying to think it through at the heart of improvisation, is a willingness to resist the normativity that produced what that was. Then you’re trying to improvise outside of there. You’re trying to go to a queer space or through a queer methodology to flip the beat or change the rhythm.” (3)

Thomas’ words (as they so often do) strike a deep chord for me. When I’m dancing and improvising, I’m responding to sound, to my own body, or to a fiddle tune without the script of “what comes next.” Improvisation requires an imagination beyond what we know. It’s audacious. It’s cheeky. We dare to dream that there could be something else, something more beyond what we have just experienced. Thinking broadly, when we imagine a life outside of what the norms of heteronormativity and binary gender offer, this is where marginalities enact themselves, where space is made for diverse populations, where queering occurs.

Islands themselves also seem predisposed to this kind of queering. I met fellow queer people on Lismore, Skye, and Uist, however, I’m not so much referring here to individual identities of the island’s inhabitants but rather, as Greenhill states, islands’ “symbolic locality” as places that are set apart, imbued with beyond-ness. Indeed, islands are set apart, surrounded by an ever-changing, infinitely diverse, unquantifiable bodies of fluid (what could be more queer?!) “Island time” as it’s referred to on Uist - the convention of events occurring in their own time, on their own terms, or when folks arrive - also seems to connect to queerness, especially the interpretation of queerness suggested by Judith (Jack) Halberstam in their book In a Queer Time and Place: Transgender Bodies, Subcultural Lives: “One of my central assertions has been that queer temporality disrupts the normative narratives of time that form the base of nearly every definition of the human in almost all of our modes of understanding.” (4)

(Working with singers during the Ceòlas song and dance weekend, photo by Lowenna Hosken)

On the final day of the Ceòlas Song and Dance Weekend, brilliantly curated by Dance Officer Lowenna Hosken, I found myself improvising amidst my dance students as we worked with participants who had been studying Gaelic song with Fiona MacKenzie. The song students, seated, would sing traditional puirt à beaul (literally Gaelic “tunes from the mouth”) as we listened in, standing close, attempting to find gestures that would imitate their Gaelic syllables. While I had encountered many of the specific puirt repertoire in my work with Mary Ann Kennedy and the Campbells of Greepe, the act of composing repeatable footwork for the dancers in the moment was both thrilling and daunting. It happened blindingly fast, and the speed of the workshop facilitated a kind of insouciance that helped me stave off any imposter-syndrome anxiety about my own (in)ability to understand Gaelic or the gravitas of bringing traditional song and percussive dance (back) into conversation. “What was that phrase again?” “Could you sing it slower?” “One to many beats there.” “Yes, that’s it.” I constructed a phrase, taking a moment to work with the dancers who joined in with abandon. Soon we were moving together and all were smiling. “They’ve got the Gaelic in their feet.” “You can hear the words!” Eschewing the Derridean notion of false binaries, we endeavored to enact a blurring of our ostensibly separate traditional art forms: a performative slippage, a synesthetic blending of mediums in which the dance could be heard and the song could be seen, enacting a trans-linguistic, anatomic translocation from the island of one body, to the island of another. And as we moved and sounded together, I smiled to myself thinking about islands and about the way improvisation enables intimacy, if we dare to imagine.

(Awaiting the Oban ferry on Lismore in March 2019 with participants of the Lismore Music & Dance Weekend)

(1) Pauline Greenhill, "Neither a Man nor a Maid": Sexualities and Gendered Meanings in Cross-Dressing Ballads, The Journal of American Folklore, 1995, p. 156 (2) The abandonment of these charted steps was the beginning of me feeling uncomfortable with using the word “choreography” for my work. In Antje Hildebrandt’s 2013 video, “The End of Choreography,” she reminds us that choreography is literally “dance writing” in Greek. While I enjoy writing about dance, I personally feel far more connected to the words performer, dancer, or improviser to describe what I do when I’m dancing.

(3) Thomas F. DeFrantz, Dance Studies Colloquium, Temple University, Boyer College, February 19, 2019, Uploaded April 25, 2019

(4) Judith (Jack) Halberstam, In a Queer Time and Place: Transgender Bodies, Subcultural Lives, 2005, p. 152

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firstfootingscotland · 6 years ago

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International Dance Day, Dannsa, and Art of Treepling Full Program!!

Greetings from Edinburgh and happy International Dance Day! Though initiated in honour of the birthday of French balletmaster Jean-Georges Noverre (1727 -1810), widely considered to be the instigator of the narrative ballets of the 18th century, International Dance Day now celebrates dances from all times (past, present, and yet to be!), all geographies, all abilities, and all ethnicities. After all, Joann Kealinohomoku reminds us in her classic piece of dance research, “An Anthropologist Looks at Ballet as a Form of Ethnic Dance,” just how ‘ethnic’ ballet is. Disputing the notion that ballet is somehow ‘universal,’ Kealinohomoku argues that ballet, like all movement forms, is couched in (especially European) cultural practices. She writes:

“Consider, for example, how Western is the tradition of the proscenium stage, the usual three part performance which lasts for about two hours, our star system, our use of curtain calls and applause, and our usage of French terminology. Think how culturally revealing it is to see the stylized Western customs enacted on the stage, such as the mannerisms from the age of chivalry, courting, weddings, christenings, burial, and mourning customs. Think how our [sic] world view is revealed in the oft recurring themes of unrequited love, sorcery, self-sacrifice through long suffering, mistaken identity, and misunderstandings which have tragic consequences” (1)

Though I would critique the piece especially in its uncritical use of the term “ethnic” to refer to indigenous or non-Western dance forms, “An Anthropologist Looks at Ballet as a Form of Ethnic Dance” reminds that we all have cultural biases that colour our experience of movement. This is known in anthropology as “ethnocentrism.” (2) The article encourages us to be aware of our own biases and also levels the poetic playing-field of dance analysis. Kealinohomoku suggests puckishly that all dance forms - not just those on the concert stage - should have equal opportunity to be celebrated, examined, and supported.

In that spirit, each year on International Dance Day, a dancer is invited to write a message to the international community of dancers and dance-lovers. I’ve been combing through these messages today, nourished by some delicious quotes. There’s the 2012 message from Sidi Larbi Cherkaoui: “I think of dance as the most current, the most up-to-date history lesson, as it is in a constant relationship with its most recent past and can only happen in the present.” Trisha Brown’s in 2017: “Dance is made of people, people and ideas...there is no secret meaning in my dances.” And Anne Teresa De Keersmaeker’s in 2011: “For me dancing is a way of thinking. Through dance we can embody the most abstract ideas and thus reveal what we cannot see, what we cannot name.” However, my favourite International Dance Day message comes from fellow percussive dancer Israel Galván, delivered in 2015. Galván writes eloquently about dance at-large but also brings into the conversation his own heroes from Spanish Flamenco and other dancers from traditions which might not usually have a place on the proverbial castlist of dance writ-large. I’ve excerpted his message here:

I danced my first duo with my mother, seven months pregnant. It may seem an exaggeration. Although I almost always dance alone, I imagine that I am accompanied by ghosts which make me abandon my role of "dancer of solitudes". Did Didi-Huberman not mean to say: of soleares songs.

I like the word fusion, not as a marketing word, a confusion to sell a certain style, a brand. Better fission, an atomic mixture: a cocktail with the feet fixed to the ground of Juan Belmonte, the aerial arms of Isadora Duncan and the half swaying belly of Jeff Cohen in the Goonies. And with all these ingredients to make a pleasant and intense drink, which is delicious or bitter or which goes to your head. Our tradition is also that mixture, we come from a cocktail and the orthodox people want to hide their secret formula. But no, races and religions and political creeds, everything mixes! Everybody can dance together! Maybe not holding onto each other, but by each other's side.

There is an old Chinese proverb which says: "the flutter of a butterfly's wings can be felt across the world". When a fly takes flight in Japan, a typhoon shakes up the water of the Caribbean. Pedro G Romero, after a shattering sevillanas dance says: the same day the bomb fell in Hiroshima, Nijinsky repeated his great leap in a forest in Austria. And I continue imagining: a lash of Savion Glover makes Mikhail Baryshnikov turn. At that moment, Kazuo Ono stays still and triggers a certain electricity in María Muñoz, who thinks about Vonrad Veidt and forces Akram Khan to cause an earthquake in his dressing room; they move their rattles and the floor becomes covered with the tired drops of their sweat.

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(Isreal Galván at the London Flamenco Festival in 2011)

I had the pleasure of watching this video of Israel Galván dancing during this past week in Kingussie during a five-day step dance development session with Scottish traditional dance company Dannsa. After spending the mornings and afternoons working in the stunning Talla Nan Ross hall improvising, talking about the connections between dance and music (as well as dance as music) and expanding the dancers’ vocabularies through traditional percussive dance repertoire from many different geographies, we often gathered at the dancers’ homes in the evenings to watch videos of our favourite movers. Curled up on the floor of Sandra Robertson’s house between Sandra and Caroline Reagh, we marvelled together at Israel’s incredibly idiosyncratic physicality, his articulation, and amazing integration of body movement and impeccable feet. It was a wondrously enjoyable week with these two astonishingly beautiful Scottish dance artists, and it was made all the more special because I first saw Israel Galván’s work in much the same way, gazing awed into a laptop in the home of contemporary Irish dancer Colin Dunne.

(Working with Dannsa’s masterful movers Sandra Robertson and Caroline Reagh last week at Talla Nan Ross, Kingussie)

This style of pedagogy - a mentor sharing the work of other artists that they find personally inspiring is something I first experienced with my teachers. I’m very pleased to announce that two of whom, Colin Dunne and Sandy Silva will be visiting Edinburgh soon as part of the Art of Treepling weekend June 7-9! Michelle Brady, Wendy Timmons and I have been working since the autumn to put together this very special weekend of percussive dance workshops, work-in-progress sharing, panel discussions, dance film screenings, and performances to culminate the First Footing Dance Residency. I am delighted to say that the full program is now LIVE! Here are the details, it would be wonderful to see you, and dance with you, there!

Nic Gareiss: The Art of Treepling - Work-in-Progress Showing

7 June, 7:30 pm, St. Cecilia’s Hall, 50 Niddry Street

In the final chapter of dance collectors Joan and Tom Flett’s 1964 book Traditional Dancing in Scotland, the authors make reference to “the art of treepling.” At the time of the text’s publication, treepling, “beating out the rhythm of the music with the feet,” was one of the lesser-known features of Scottish dancing and had almost entirelydisappeared. (Flett & Flett, 1964, p. 260) This new solo step dance work-in-progress engages the Flett’s original research, re-imagining treepling as a locus of creative interpretation of traditional music & dance in Scotland and other geographies in which treepling is found, including Ireland, Canada, and the Appalachian region of the United States. Followed by Q&A with invited guests.

Masterclass with Sandy Silva

8 June, 10 am, St. Leonard’s Land Dance Studio, Holyrood Road

This masterclass is for dancers working in traditional forms of foot percussion who want to develop a deeper sense of movement flow and sonic placement within the hands and feet. We will accompany ourselves singing a vocal turlutte (melodic syllables) integrating the full body music experience. Dancers are expected to have some percussive dance experience.

Masterclass with Colin Dunne

8 June, 11:30 am, St. Leonard’s Land Dance Studio, Holyrood Road

In this masterclass, Colin will draw upon his unique approach to traditional Irish dance, focusing on release of muscular tension to find a flow, rhythm and clarity in both movement and sound. Dancers should have some percussive dance experience.

Playing with Dance: Masterclass with Nic Gareiss for Traditional Musicians

8 June, 2 pm, St. Leonard’s Land Dance Studio, Holyrood Road

This workshop for traditional musicians explores the relationship between music and dance. After trying out a little foot music, participants will play with percussive dancer and artist-in-residence Nic Gareiss, sparking conversations around collaboration, listening, and creative connection. Musicians should be able to play a tune at moderate speed. The class will encourage musicians to explore creative collaboration in a safe, non-competitive environment. Participants should come ready to move and wear smooth-soled shoes with a low heel.

The Art of Treepling Panel Discussions

8 June, 3:30 pm, Scottish Storytelling Centre, Netherbow Theatre, 43-45 High Street

Part 1: Imagining New Futures for Scottish Step Dance

The resurgence of interest of step dance in Scotland in the late 20th century was encouraged in-part by inspirational teaching visits by dancers abroad (Melin 2005, passim). Since then, step dancers in Scotland have continued teaching, performing and reimaging percussive dance as a rich cultural locus of music-making, creativity, identity and community-building. This panel aims to spark conversation around fostering continued rich, diverse and innovative step dancing in Scotland across many contexts.

Part 2: Developing New Solo Step Dance Work: A Conversation with ColinDunne & Nic Gareiss

Contemporary traditional dance artists Colin Dunne and Nic Gareiss discuss the process, pleasures, and pitfalls of developing their new solo step dance works including Colin’s critically-acclaimed shows Out of Time and Concert and Nic’s show Solo Square Dance and work-in-progress The Art of Treepling.

Migration Dance Film Project Screening

8 June, 7 pm, Scottish Storytelling Centre, Netherbow Theatre, 43-45 High Street

Migration Dance Film Project is a series of interconnected short films exploring themes of migration. Award-winning team, filmmaker Marlene Millar and choreographer Sandy Silvacombine nuanced image, sound dynamics and the intricacy of percussive dance to shape an emotional cinematographic storyline that gives voice, image and movement to past and present transformative journeys. Followed by Q&A with Choreographer Sandy Silva and Director Marlene Millar

Masterclass with Nic Gareiss

8 June, 11 am, St. Leonard’s Land Dance Studio, Holyrood Road

This masterclass for dancers with percussive dance experience (tap, flamenco, step dance, clogging, etc.) is designed to enrich percussive dance practice and give participants tools to improve articulation, phrasing and technique. Using an intersectional approach, attendees will be guided through a series of exercises drawing on a myriad of rhythm-making step and clog dance styles and their symbioticrelationship with, and as, music, enriching audible rapport with the floor through creativity and improvisation.

Treepling in Performance: Sandy Silva, Colin Dunne & Nic Gareiss

9 June, 2 pm, Venue TBC

This culminating performance will feature solos, improvisations and spontaneous collaborations by three masters of contemporary percussive dance. The audience is encouraged to move about the space to observe from many angles as Silva, Dunne and Gareiss synesthetically combine movement and sound, dance and music, treepling through their feet, hands and voices.

(1) Joann Kealinohomoku, 1970

(2) For more on this, see Theresa Buckland’s 1999 response “All Dances Are Ethnic but Some Are More Ethnic Than Others.”

#Kealinohomoku #Ballet #Ethnic dance #Buckland #Theresa Buckland #dance research #dance anthropology #Trisha Brown #Israel Galvan #Israel Galván #dannsa #caroline reagh #sandra robertson

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firstfootingscotland · 6 years ago

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Bogha-frois Conversations

Early this year during Glasgow’s Celtic Connections Festival I had the pleasure of joining a host of incredible LGBT+ artists for a performance and a panel around the theme of Bogha-frois: LGBT+ Voices in Folk. A brainchild of Pedro Cameron (Man of the Minch), Bogha-frois began as a workshop at the Scottish Storytelling Centre and takes its name from the Gaelic word for “rainbow.” The energy around Bogha-frois has enacted a metamorphosis - far beyond a standalone workshop, panel, or critically-acclaimed gig, Bogha-frois is a movement celebrating gender and sexual diversity within traditional and folk music, song, and dance in Scotland. Following the events in Glasgow, I wanted to continue these conversations and proposed a series of monthly blog posts. It’s hope this series will be a place for dialogue around the intersections of traditional arts, identity, and each artists’ path as a LGBT+ person. This month’s Bogha-frois conversationalist decided to share her story anonymously. I’m very grateful for her artistry, generosity, and courage in speaking about her experience.

Tell me a story... what was a moment when you felt both your identity as a traditional musician and your identity as a LGBTQIA+ person were in focus? (1)

I’m not sure they have ever been in focus at the same time until the Brogha-frois gig at Celtic Connections this year.

How do you identify? What are the pronouns, descriptors or other words you like to use, if any, to describe yourself in regard to your LGBTQIA+ status.

I identify as gay, would seldom use “lesbian” as I feel it’s more of a noun than an adjective, and when I was first starting to think about how I would describe myself to people, probably around 20 years ago now, I was really conscious that I didn’t want it to make me a “thing,” rather than a way. I guess that has stayed with me into adulthood.

Talk about your perceptions of LGBTQIA+ identity (both yours and others) within your experience playing traditional music in Scotland.

I think the trad music scene in Scotland is becoming increasingly open, and I’m aware of many more openly LGBTQIA+ folk on the scene. I don’t really think about my own identity within the trad music scene.

In what ways do you feel your identity as a LGBTQIA+ person and a traditional musician intersect, overlap, engage?

I don’t feel that my sexuality has had much influence on my music: as a mainly instrumental musician, I haven’t struggled so much with the pronoun issue a lot of singers find difficult. The times I’ve been aware of self-censoring are all around chat - the introduction to a tune written for my first girlfriend ended up having a silly story attached, rather than any affection. A tune written for a great love was seldom introduced at all, as I was conscious that I didn’t want to demean it with a glib story, but couldn’t face outing myself or talking myself in knots onstage! Before anwswering this question, I would have said that I haven’t ever really been aware of these parts of my identity overlapping or intersecting. With the above said, perhaps I have made a strong effort to make sure that they didn’t overlap. The Bogha-frois gig was a big deal for me in regards to that. It was a pretty nerve-wracking thing to allow them to both be visible. And, as it turned out in the end, it really didn’t need to be!

Talk about your experience connecting with other LGBTQIA+ folks both inside and outside the traditional arts. If you’re comfortable sharing, talk about any incidents of homophobia or transphobia that you’ve witnessed both inside and outside the traditional arts.

I don’t really take a great part in the “folk scene,” and even less in the gay scene: a situation with which I am quite content. I have many gay friends, but these are mostly people whose only connection to the folk scene is me! None of these friendships are based on a shared identity, more on shared humour, experiences, university choices!

I grew up surrounded by the casually homophobic language and attitudes that many of my peers did, but can’t remember any overt or aggressive incidents. One really positive thing I’m aware of is that I feel that I’m hearing less and less of that all the time. I’m sure it still exists, but people seem to be much more aware of how offensive it can be and making an effort to alter this. The attitudes may take longer to change, but the language and behaviour being tempered is a positive thing.

How do you see the traditional arts changing in regard to LGBTQIA+ people? What are the further changes you would like to see?

Perhaps it is representative of society in general, but the number of young musicians coming through now who feel completely comfortable to be out and open about their identity is greatly increased since I first got involved with the trad arts scene. LGBTQIA+ audience members are much more likely to see themselves represented by performers now, making the scene feel much less cloistered and way more inclusive. Long may this continue!

#bogha-frois #rainbow #lgbtq #lgbt #interview #conversations #traditional arts #Scottish music #traditional music

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firstfootingscotland · 6 years ago

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Why Treeple?

Why do so many cultures create audible rhythm with our feet? This question-turned-obsession has intrigued me since adolescence. On every inhabited continent, humans have evolved a manner of creating audible dance. What is it in us that drives this remarkable concurrent existence of all these percussive dance forms? Tap dancer Lane Alexander once stated "it’s in the genetics of people that we’re drawn to stomping the ground with our feet and, whether it’s dancing for rain or crops or celebrating birth or wedding, percussive dance has always been about community, about being ‘a part of.’"

If this is the case, why have we innovated specialised techniques dispersing percussive sounds across different parts of our feet? Why do we shuffle, flap, pitter patter, flatter, batter, wing, látigo, toe fence, drum, click? In anticipation of tomorrow’s showing, here’s some text I am working with trying to grapple with why we treeple, as framed through the steps and terminology in final chapter of Joan & Tom Flett’s 1964 text, Traditional Dancing in Scotland.

Why Treeple?

To answer this, I think we have to imagine a time wherein we had a different relationship with the southern hemisphere of our bodies.... French courts and dancing masters, well turned ankles and shapely calves. Louis 14th in Versailles, William Henry Lane in Manhattan, Jeremiah Molyneaux in Kerry, and Andrew Cochrane in West Berwickshire. (1) Maybe our feet didn’t seem so far away in previous times?

But why treeple?

Why not just step, or step and touch?

Treepling saves energy, allowing an economy of effort, a maximised opportunity for ease and pleasure, smaller muscle groups, fewer weight changes.

More than a single stamp but a dispersal of sounds across different parts of the foot.

Modular minute gestures of endless permutation.

A double-beat.

A flatter.

A treble.

A double-treble.

A triple-treeple.

Maybe more than the joy of endless mathematical movement combinations, you could say the art of treepling is the bridge between dance and music.

Instead of bodies bounding across the floor, devouring space, treepling, like the fiddler’s digits on the neck, or a piper’s fingers on the chanter, enacts reflexive relations with a surface. Blurring sound and sight and touch.

We touch the floor.

We touch the music.

We touch the Jenny Dang the Weaver and the Laird of Drumblair.

“The Art of Treepling” development showing 2

Thursday, April 4, 4-4:30 pm, FREE!

Dance Studio, St. Leonard’s Land, Holyrood Road, University of Edinburgh

(1) In the 1930s, Andrew Cochrane of West Gordon in West Berwickshire gave “a course of treepling” to his apt dance pupils and performed in exhibition step-dances. Traditional Dancing in Scotland. Joan and Tom Flett, 1964, p. 260

#step dance #flamenco #percussive dance #treeple #university of edinburgh #synthesthetic #piping #pipes #fiddle #chanter #text #lane alexander #tap dance

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firstfootingscotland · 6 years ago

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Launch footage and events in Edinburgh this week!

Just a quick post to make you aware of some exciting public events happening in Edinburgh this week!

(photo by Darragh Kane)

On Thursday afternoon I’ll be at St. Leonard’s Land Dance Studio for the second open development sharing of “The Art of Treepling,” a new solo step dance work-in-progress. Taking its name from the final chapter of Joan & Tom Flett’s 1964 text Traditional Dancing in Scotland, the piece engages with the Flett’s research to re-imagine treepling, “the art of beating out the rhythm of the music with the feet,” as a creative locus for the interpretation of traditional music and dance, in Scotland and beyond. (1) The showing is free and open to the public.

“The Art of Treepling” development showing 2

Thursday, April 4, 4-4:30 pm, FREE!

Dance Studio, St. Leonard’s Land, Holyrood Road, University of Edinburgh

On Saturday I’ll be giving a very special workshop for traditional musicians at the Scottish Storytelling Centre called Playing With Dance. Designed for intermediate to advanced musicians, Playing with Dance explores the relationships between moving and sounding bodies in the context of traditional music and dance. After trying out a little foot music, participants will have the opportunity to play with a dancer one-on-one, fostering conversations around collaboration, listening, and creative connection. Participants should be able to play a tune at moderate speed. The class will allow musicians to practice collaborating in a safe, non-competitive environment. Participants should also come ready to move wear smooth-soled supportive shoes with a low heel.

Playing with Dance: A Workshop for Traditional Musicians

Saturday, April 6, 10-1 pm, £15, £12 for Forum Members

Scottish Storytelling Centre, High Street, Edinburgh

Finally, on Sunday I’ll be hosting a Percussive Dance Lab at Dance Base. This masterclass for dancers with percussive dance experience (tap, flamenco, step dance, clogging, etc.) is designed to hone dancers’ practice and give us tools to improve articulation, phrasing, and technique. Using an intersectional approach, participants will be guided through a series of exercises drawing on a myriad of rhythm-making dance styles and their symbiotic relationship with, and as, music, enriching our percussive relationship with the floor through creativity and improvisation.

Percussive Dance Lab

Sunday, April 7, 11-12:30 pm, £12.50 (£10.50)

Dance Base, Grassmarket, Edinburgh

In anticipation of these events, I wanted to share some recently-edited footage from the launch concert in December at St. Cecilia’s Hall with special guests Caleb Teicher, Seumas Campbell, and Mairi Campbell! It was such an incredible night and I think the video really captures that! Enjoy!!

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(1) Traditional Dancing in Scotland. Joan and Tom Flett, 1964, p. 260

#Scottish Storytelling Centre #the art of treepling #university of edinburgh #St. Leonard's Land #dance base #percussive dance #tap #flamenco #Irish step dance #Irish dance #Mairi Campbell #Seumas Campbell #Caleb Teicher #Moray House School of Education #School of Scottish Studies #Traditional Dance Forum

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firstfootingscotland · 6 years ago

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Bogha-frois Conversations: Malin Lewis

During Glasgow’s Celtic Connections Festival I had the pleasure of joining a host of incredible LGBT+ artists for a performance and a panel around the theme of Bogha-frois: LGBT+ Voices in Folk. A brainchild of Pedro Cameron (Man of the Minch), Bogha-frois began as a workshop at the Scottish Storytelling Centre and takes its name from the Gaelic word for “rainbow.” The energy around Bogha-frois has enacted a metamorphosis - far beyond a workshop, panel, or gig, Bogha-frois is a movement celebrating gender and sexual diversity within traditional and folk music, song, and dance in Scotland. Following the events in February, I wanted to continue these conversations and immediately proposed a monthly blog post featuring dialogue around the intersections of traditional arts, identity, and each artists’ path as a LGBT+ person. In honour of international Transgender Day of Visibility on March 31, I wanted to begin these conversations with piper, fiddler, and pipe-maker Malin Lewis!

Tell me a story... what was a moment when you felt both your identity as a traditional musician and your identity as a LGBTQIA+ person were in focus? (1)

For me this first happened during my last concert at Plockton Music School. I had come out to a couple of people throughout my time there but during the last few days on the “summer tour” I told everyone in the music school including Dougie and Rhona (head of the music school). Everyone was entirely supportive and were happy for me, in many ways I was sad not to have spoken about it sooner but I had known all along this would be the case. When I performed I dressed androgynously, wore my hair up and put on some makeup. The performance went so well and everyone was on a total high. It felt very liberating to do this in front of a crowd I had played for many times and in a place I think of as home with the support of family and friends.

How do you identify? What are the pronouns, descriptors or other words you like to use, if any, to describe yourself in regard to your LGBTQIA+ status.

I would describe myself as Trans, androgynous, gender non-binary and use they/them pronouns.

Talk about your perceptions of LGBTQIA+ identity (both yours and others) within your experience playing traditional music in Scotland. In what ways do you feel your identity as a LGBTQIA+ person and a traditional musician intersect, overlap, engage?

For me, my gender and traditional music are both equally fundamental to who I am. Music is my means of expressing myself and how I feel. Like music, being transgender is something I simultaneously understand completely and not at all. It is something deep within me but like the most moving music, I cannot always express or describe it in words. I wish I could understand it completely, but in both cases there is something greater going on than a certain chord sequence or the body you were born in. There is something happening elsewhere on some inexplicable level that can only ever be felt inside. To me the best things about music are the bits you don’t understand, perhaps that’s just me projecting how I feel about myself.

(Malin Lewis, still from Lost Clock Productions’ beautiful film about Bogha-frois)

Talk about your experience connecting with other LGBTQIA+ people both inside and outside the traditional arts.

I was lucky enough to be a part of Bogha-frois through which I met some incredible and inspiring people. We all felt the same way about our identity and its link to our music. Outside I have found it more difficult to connect with LGBTQIA+ people. I think I just haven’t spent a lot of time in these circles and communities as I could. I tend not to venture outside of the music communities. This is why Bogha-frois was so amazing as I got to be a part of both at the same time which was so uplifting and nice to enjoy being with other LGBTQIA+ people and have more in common than just sexuality and gender.

If you’re comfortable sharing, talk about any incidents of homophobia or transphobia that you’ve witnessed both inside and outside the traditional arts.

I have not experienced much transphobia in the trad world beyond some bad jokes and some gossiping. Overall it is very supportive and welcoming and it’s amazing talking to people about it often people who you do not suspect.

How do you see the traditional arts changing in regard to LGBTQIA+ people? What are the further changes you would like to see?

I would like to see queer identities celebrated a bit more. There are more than enough members who are at the very top of the traditional music world but very rarely do any of them talk that openly about it. I think talking about it freely and being proud of it is the best way to change things and to change the climate around it for the better and for the next generation. Giving young people, from all backgrounds, genders, sexualities or races role models they can identify with is one of the best ways to make the trad world more inclusive. I think in many ways the LGBTQIA+ issues are tied to the “woman in trad” issues and I believe it is on the way to being improved but that it still has further to go. As there are naturally fewer members of the LGBTQIA+ community in trad than women in trad there are fewer of us to speak out about it. I believe it would be incredibly beneficial for both parties to work more closely to call for further equality across the board in traditional music.

To learn more about Malin and their music, visit Malin Makes Music on Facebook.

(1) Following methodology developed by Fiona Buckland in her book Impossible Dance: Club Culture and Queer World-making, I began each conversation asking artists to tell me a story. This, Buckland reminds us, redistributes significance to the voice of the artist, rather than the anthropologist/researcher/interviewer. In Buckland’s words, “the meanings they made from the practices are more crucial than whatever meaning I impose with the theoretical tools in my standard issue doctoral utility belt.” (Buckland 2002, p. 11)) This feels incredibly important when collaborating with folks whose voices have so often been underheard or marginalized.

#traditional music #lgbtqia+#bogha-frois #queerness #traditional arts #malin lewis #pipes #piping #fiddle #pipe-making #scottish #scotland #scottish storytelling centre #glasgow #celtic connections #lost clock productions #pedro cameron #man of the minch

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firstfootingscotland · 6 years ago

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First Sharing Wrapped!

Thanks to all that came to the showing last weekend at the University of Edinburgh’s St. Leonard’s Land Studios. It was wonderful to have so many folks there to warmly welcome this new work! I was touched that twenty-eight of you were present for this first showing, including many of the MSc Students in Dance Science & Education, pictured below!

(Students of the MSc Dance Science & Education at the University of Edinburgh’s St. Leonard’s Land Studio during the first open development showing of “The Art of Treepling” last week, photo by Lindsay Corr)

As I prepare for the second open development showing, I am going back Flett & Flett’s original chapter, reading, re-reading, and thinking so much about the ways they documented “treepling” in Scotland, “the art of beating out the rhythm of the music with the feet.” (1) Such rich description, their writing takes us to times and places where treepling was part of life, not only a means of movement, but a mode of socialisation. Their descriptions of the sounds of this dance form are especially rich: “Tacketty boots rattling away,” (1) “capering, rattling, shuffling.” (2) More on this soon!

If you missed the first showing, here’s a short clip of a section called “Treeple Time (3/4 + 3/2 excerpt)″. Special thanks to Lindsay Corr at the Scottish Storytelling Centre for capturing this moment! There will be a second public development showing on April 4th, hope to see you there!!

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“The Art of Treepling,” development showing 2

Thursday, April 4

4-4:30 pm

Dance Studio

St. Leonard’s Land, Holyrood Road

University of Edinburgh

(1) Traditional Dancing in Scotland. Joan and Tom Flett, 1964, p. 260

(2) IBID. p. 261

#step dance #treepling #University of Edinburgh #dance research #the art of treepling #nic gareiss #moray house school of education

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firstfootingscotland · 6 years ago

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Showing today!

(photo by Michael Erlewine)

I wanted to put together one last micro-post in advance of today’s free open development showing of The Art of Treepling, happening yes, TODAY from 4-4:30pm in St. Leonard’s Land Dance Studio, Holyrood Road on the campus of the University of Edinburgh.

The Art of Treepling (working title) is a new solo step dance work-in-progress that engages the work of dance collectors Joan and Tom Flett from their 1964 book Traditional Dancing in Scotland. In the final chapter of their text, the Fletts describe treepling, “beating out the rhythm of the music with the feet” (1) as an integral part of the landscape of Scottish Traditional Dance. Taking its name from this chapter, the solo step dance work The Art of Treepling engages with the Flett’s research in Scotland, as well as with other traditions of percussive dance from Ireland, Canada, and Appalachia, re-imagining treepling as a creative locus of interpretation for traditional music & dance from Scotland and beyond.

“The Art of Treepling,” development showing 1

Thursday, March 21

4-4:30 pm

Dance Studio

St. Leonard’s Land, Holyrood Road

University of Edinburgh

(1) Joan and Tom Flett. Traditional Dancing in Scotland. 1964. p. 260

#treepling #dance research #micro-post #university of edinburgh #scotland #nic gareiss #traditional dance #first footing #percussive dance #step dance #dance #art of treepling

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firstfootingscotland · 6 years ago

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Treepling: A Creative Musical Locus

As I prepare for tomorrow’s showing, I’ve been thinking about the ways that treepling, percussive stepping indigenous to Scotland defined by dance collectors Joan and Tom Flett as “beating out the rhythm of the music with the feet” (1) could act as a creative locus in encountering music from geographies outwith Scotland. If the defining characteristic of treepling is the articulation of musical rhythms using our southernmost appendages, how might we “treeple” rhythms and melodies from places that might not have their own version of treepling? How would our treepling need to flex in order to dance these other rhythms? What could we learn from this music as we embody it?

This made me think about music and dance from Norway, especially the hardanger fiddle repertoire so symbiotically connected to Norwegian traditional dance. One particular tune type in this repertoire, the Norwegian hamborgar, is a circling polka round dance form in which dancers occasionally stamp to punctuate their steps. (2) This aspect of the hamborgar seemed an entry point for exploration of treepling out this music. Here’s a version of a hamborgar as performed beautifully by Britt Pernille Frøholm and Irene Tillung, a Norwegian hardanger fiddle and accordion duo I first heard perform at the North Atlantic Fiddle Convention in Aberdeen, Scotland.

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(Frøholm/Tillung perform Andrea Berge, Hamborgar)

I’ve been a fan of Frøholm/Tillung’s sparse but deeply rich and colourful arrangements of traditional Norwegian dance music for over a decade but never thought about how to evoke the rhythms of their melodies and arrangements if I were to perform them solo. This posed a unique challenge: If I were going to articulate the rhythms of Andrea Berge’s hamborgar using percussive treepling footwork, how would I do it? And what of Frøholm/Tillung’s arrangement, to what extent would I need to evoke the extra-melodic musical choices they made to frame the tune, surrounding it like the setting around a precious stone in a ring? How would this stretch treepling? And how could treepling become music of its own, inspired by the specific melody, the performers, and culture from which it originates? Here’s an attempt...

Don’t miss tomorrow’s performance of Andrea Berge (Hamborgar) during the first Art of Treepling free open development sharing.

“The Art of Treepling,” development showing 1

Thursday, March 21

4-4:30 pm

Dance Studio

St. Leonard’s Land, Holyrood Road

University of Edinburgh

(1) Traditional Dancing in Scotland. Joan and Tom Flett, 1964, p. 260

(2) Hamborgar. Folkepedia. www.folkepedia.no/hamborgar. Though the dancers performing hamborgar stamp, I am defining treepling here as a dispersal of sounds beyond a singular, whole-footed stamp.

#hamborgar #treepling #dance research #work in progress #Britt Pernille Frøholm #Irene Tillung #accordian #art of treepling #Norwegian Traditional Music #Norwegian Dance #hardanger fiddle #fiddle

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firstfootingscotland · 6 years ago

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Treepling At-large: A (miniature) Homage to D. Ray White

Today as I continued to prepare for Thursday’s showing at the University of Edinburgh’s St. Leonard’s Land Studio, I began to think about the ways that treepling, which according to dance collectors Joan and Tom Flett is defined as “beating out the rhythm of the music with the feet,” (1) is present in other localities outside of Scotland. Further, I wondered if part of my larger residency project of researching step dance here in Scotland might benefit from being in conversation by other percussive dance traditions at-large.

Especially when thinking about the step the Fletts call a “treble,” I was reminded of dancer D. Ray White (1927-1985) from West Virginia in the Appalachian region of the United States. A treble, as collected in Scotland by the Fletts, entails “a forward and backward movement, the ground being struck with the ball of the foot.” (2) D. Ray, who described his style as a mix of flatfooting, tap, and steps of his own, also trebled but (uniquely) used a combination of both toe-toe trebles and heel-toe trebles. When I watch his dancing, I’m struck by his skill in navigating grounded, downward-directed sense of weight in alternation with higher, lifted hops and trebles. I enjoy his time, the music he makes with his feet, even (and especially) when there is no other music. In addition to performing to Appalachian instrumental dance music, D. Ray also combined his dancing with hand-patting, singing, storytelling, and talking blues. (3)

(D. Ray White, 1927-1985)

Performing Mr. White’s repertoire feels timely. Much media has been created around D. Ray’s family, a great deal of it perpetuating Appalachiaphobic caricatures of economically disadvantaged southern white folks. In these depictions, Appalachian culture, and dance especially, is often used to stereotype and deride Appalachian people. (4) So in this project, in my humble attempt to bring into conversation treepling from within Scotland and geographies abroad, it feels crucial to refuse these stereotypes and celebrate the prowess, facility, and artistry of sound and movement found in percussice dance practices local to the Appalachian region. So, by way of minute reparation, here’s a little homage to D. Ray White, master Appalachian treepler.

“The Art of Treepling,” development showing 1

Thursday, March 21

4-4:30 pm

Dance Studio

St. Leonard’s Land, Holyrood Road

University of Edinburgh

(1) Traditional Dancing in Scotland. Joan and Tom Flett, 1964, p. 260

(2) IBID. p. 261

(3) Talking Feet: Solo Southern Dance - Flatfoot, Buck and Tap documentary film, Mike Seeger and Ruth Pershing, 1987.

(4) For more on this, see Sally Rubin and Ashley York’s remarkable film, Hillbilly.

#university of edinburgh #nic gareiss #traditional dance #first footing #percussive dance #scotland #d ray white #step dance #dance #flatfooting #tap #appalachia #treepling

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firstfootingscotland · 6 years ago

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Work-in-progress showing this Thursday!

Greetings from St. Leonard’s Land Dance Studio at the University of Edinburgh where this week I’m preparing material for a public sharing of “The Art of Treepling” (working title), a new solo step dance work! Join me for the showing Thursday, March 21 from 4-4:30pm in the St. Leonard’s Land Dance Studio at the University of Edinburgh! I’ll be making daily micro-posts leading up to Thursday’s event and posting everyday so you can see what I’m working on!

(The sunny St. Leonard’s Land Dance Studio at the University of Edinburgh, location of this Thursday’s showing!)

In the final chapter of dance collectors Joan and Tom Flett's 1964 book Traditional Dancing in Scotland, the authors make reference to "the art of treepling." At the time of the text's publication, treepling, "beating out the rhythm of the music with the feet," was one of the lesser-known features of Scottish dancing and had almost entirely disappeared. (1) This new solo step dance work engages the Flett's original research, re-imagining treepling as a locus of creative interpretation of traditional music & dance in Scotland and other geographies in which treepling is found, including Ireland, Canada, and the Appalachian region of the United States.

(Original typeface from Flett & Flett’s Traditional Dancing in Scotland, p. 261)

As I started preparing the pieces for the sharing, I was reminded of a conversation in a Dublin bar between two collaborators of mine: Scottish fiddler Alasdair Fraser and Swedish percussionist Petter Berndalen. Alasdair asked Petter playfully, “how can you live in a world of three?” He was referring to the fact that the majority of traditional dance music repertoire is in the time signature 3/4. To this, Petter replied, “Yes, but in the world of three there many numbers.” This comment made me think about the fact that so many of the metres I love to work in are based in threes: 3/4, 3/8, 6/8, 9/8. These metres are found across step dance genres and localities: Waltz clogs from the north of England, brandies from Quebec, jigs from Cape Breton, slip jigs from Ireland.

When I teach step dance classes I often ask my students how these three-bases rhythms feel in their bodies compared to duple metres (2/4, 4/4). I often hear students say that it feels as though they have more time, that the luscious round grooves of triple metres make them feel more at ease. I frequently describe these rhythms as circular, with the percussive points of contact with the floor like the spokes of a wheel, the hands of a clock, or slices of a pie.

If I was going to put together a show about treepling or tripling, I couldn’t resist including some “treeple” time. I wanted to give a sense for the way these grooves feel playful and voluptuous, slipping seamlessly between them, first ascending (3/4, 3/8, 6/8, 9/8) and then descending in reverse order. I also wanted to gently allude to some of the traditional footwork motifs found in each of these time signatures. Here’s just the first moment from the piece-in-progress filmed today. Don’t miss your chance to see the piece in its entirety this Thursday!

(“Treeple Time” excerpt, 3/4)

“The Art of Treepling,” development showing 1

Thursday, March 21

4-4:30 pm

Dance Studio

St. Leonard's Land, Holyrood Road

University of Edinburgh

(1) Traditional Dancing in Scotland. Tom and Joan Flett, 1964, p. 260.

#treepling #alasdair fraser #petter berndalen #scotland #sweden #first footing #work-in-progress #dance #meter #metre #step dance #clog dance #gigue #percussive dance #university of edinburgh #traditional dance #nic gareiss

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firstfootingscotland · 6 years ago

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Aberdeen and visiting artist Ultan O’Brien

Last weekend I had the distinct pleasure of traveling to Aberdeen for three days of step dance workshops and a performance hosted by Jennifer Oag and Feerochie. Aberdeen was the first Scottish city I was invited to teach in back in 2007 and it felt wonderful to look around the room while I was teaching and see some of the same folks present that were in that first workshop! Jennifer was an incredibly welcoming host, even constructing a sprung floor at the Foodstory Café for the Saturday evening concert featuring Feerochie, Kai Sakurai, Wallace Calvert, Janet Lees, Toby Bennett, Anita Dortova, and myself! Thanks to all who attended the show and the masterclasses at the Academy of Expressive Arts on step dance technique, “dancing the tune,” and percussive dance improvisation!

(Feerochie rehearses at the Academy of Expressive Arts before the Saturday evening concert in Aberdeen)

(Class photo during weekend step dance workshops in Aberdeen at the Academy of Expressive Arts)

(Performing on the bespoke sprung floor at the beautiful Foodstory Café in Aberdeen - a delicious zero-waste dining and event space!)

(A final bow at the performance at Foodstory Café in Aberdeen)

Following my return from Aberdeen, I hosted visiting artist Ultan O’Brien at the University of Edinburgh’s Pleasance Studios for four days of development. A fiddler, violist, and composer based in Dublin, I’ve been interested in Ultan’s work for several years, both as a soloist and with his band Slow Moving Clouds. We’ve worked together in teaching roles before during the Leitrim Dance Project and had one period of duo development last year, however, I was really excited Ultan was up for visiting the University of Edinburgh to spend some concentrated time improvising, creating, and conversing. Here’s his version of The Rakes of Kildare...

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(The Rakes of Kildare with fiddler Ultan O’Brien, recorded at the University of Edinburgh’s Pleasance Dance Studios last weekend)

Among the pieces we worked on together, Ultan’s version of Caisleán An Óir (in Irish, “The Golden Castle”) provided a unique opportunity to highlight the AABB structure shared by so much traditional dance music from Ireland, Scotland, Scandinavia, Canada, and Appalachia. I’m often thinking about listeners for whom this music (and this dance) might blur together unintelligibly. Admittedly, the nuances are subtle: a “B” part of a tune might begin higher in the instrument’s register, one step might begin with a “pickup” a beat before the bar, and it usually all happens so fast! However, I believe that music and movement can work together to help make these nuances - arguably the thing that makes traditional music and dance what they are - legible. As a dancer who works with traditional music, I’m hoping, as one reviewer so flatteringly put it, to be “an eye-opener for the ears.” (1)

During our time in the studio last week, Ultan and I imagined a device which would hopefully allow the AABB form of the the tune (sometimes called “the tune and the turn”) to be made clear through movement. The plan was for me to follow an imaginary line back and forth through the space while turning (”the tune, and the turn”), changing direction every eight bars in tandem with the phrases of the melody. As the tune progressed, gradually I would improvise phrases of footwork imitating the melody, departing from the original turning motif but continuing tracing the path of that imaginary line. It sounded simple enough. In practice, however, once I attempted to depart from the original motif (step, toe, turn, step toe, turn) I found it extremely difficult to maintain both the linearity and the constraint of changing direction every eight bars.

In attempting this, I was reminded of something my dance teacher, contemporary Irish dancer Colin Dunne, once said: “discipline provides a pleasure.” In this case, the discipline of following the architecture of the melody of Caisleán An Óir, explicating the tune visually, provided a unique challenge. I was also reminded of Belgian contemporary dancer Anne Teresa De Keersmaeker’s piece ‘Fase’ to Steve Reich’s 'Violin Phase,’ as performed at MoMA in 2011. Her version of this pleasure-providing-discipline used sand to trace the trajectory of her movement. Though, by her own admission, this required a rigorous clarity for the lines to be visible. “It’s difficult,” she confides, “to hit the spot.”

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(Anne Teresa De Keersmaeker discusses, 'Violin Phase,' from her work, 'Fase: Four Movements to the Music of Steve Reich' presented at MoMA as part of On Line: Drawing Throughout the Twentieth Century, January 22–23, 2011)

Using a simple task (”change direction every eight bars”) we found a way to illuminate one of the invisible but crucial idiomatic facets of traditional music and dance: its construction. “Simple, but not easy,” American clogger and choreographer Sharon Leahy once told me. And while I’m aware that I could take a nod from Anne Teresa in her clarity, the opportunity to work on this with Ultan’s exquisite playing was a total joy. Here’s the piece-in-progress. Stay tuned for more news about future development time and performances with Ultan O’Brien!

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(Caisleán An Óir work-in-progress with fiddler Ultan O’Brien, recorded at the University of Edinburgh’s Pleasance Dance Studios last weekend)

(1) Paul O’Connor, “Back and Forth between Tradition and Abstraction at the Cobalt Café,” Last Night’s Fun (blog), February 8, 2011, https://lastnightsfun. wordpress.com/2011/02/08/899/.

#violin phase #fase #Anne Teresa de Keersmaeker #MoMA #Colin Dunne #Nic Gareiss #Aberdeen #Edinburgh #University of Edinburgh #Irish fiddle #Ultan O'Brien #Foodstory

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firstfootingscotland · 6 years ago

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Pacific Northwest, Pendulum Band, Perth, Limerick and Aberdeen!

Hello from Aberdeen! What a week it’s been! I returned from the Pacific Northwest of the USA a week ago today after shows with phenomenal banjoist Allison de Groot. Allison’s playing is exquisite, rhythmically infectious, and simultaneously reveals both her deep listening to vintage banjo material and her spontaneously playful creative spirit. We performed our shows as low-tech as possible in an attempt to highlight what feels at the heart of our duo show: musical response and rapport between two individuals, and between banjo and feet. Allison has two new albums out that you won’t want to miss: a new CD with Bruce Molsky’s Mountain Drifters and a duo record with fiddler Tatiana Hargreaves!

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(Allison de Groot and I performing Five Miles of Elm Wood at the Rose City Folk School in Portland, Oregon. Video by Leela Grace, who also opened the show with a beautiful set of original songs and banjo tunes!)

I flew back to Edinburgh Friday and hopped right into soundcheck at the Queen’s Hall with Mairi Campbell and her Pendulum Band. Despite my being a little bleary from crossing continents and oceans, the Pendulum Band show was an exquisitely enjoyable evening. From her first step onstage, Mairi electrified the audience. She’s an absolute hero, dissolving boundaries of genre, performance, and instrument at every turn. Improvising onstage together through both sound and gesture, I was filled with energy and inspiration just being near her. It was made inextricably clear to all that night that Mairi is made of music. Her fantastic solo show Auld Lang Syne is currently touring Scotland! In it, Mairi sings, dances, plays, speaks, and is, frankly, utterly captivating. Check out the preview below and visit her website for tour dates.

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(Mairi Campbell’s show Auld Lang Syne is on tour in Scotland now! Click here for tour dates!)

Sunday, I joined an intrepid contingent of artists, curators, and scholars to trundle from Edinburgh to the Perth Theatre by car for an event we called Casting a New Vision for Step Dance Education in Scotland: a Day of Conversation and Professional Development. The event was co-presented by the Traditional Dance Forum of Scotland, the University of Edinburgh’s Moray House School of Education, Fèisean nan Gàidheal, and Horsecross Arts. In scheming up the proceedings, my co-organizers and I wanted it to feel like a day of delights, fuelling inspiration, encouragement, and solidarity. The programme was packed! The day included participatory step dance masterclasses, step dance teaching feedback sessions (in which three teachers taught short 10-minute classes and received constructive feedback from their peers), a seminar on safe and healthy dance teaching practice delivered by Wendy Timmons, director of the MSc in Dance Science and Education at the University of Edinburgh, an interview with Halifax-based step dancer Harvey Beaton via Skype, and facilitated group discussions around support and sustainability with Michelle Brady, coordinator of the Traditional Dance Forum of Scotland and Nicola Simpson, senior development officer for Fèisean nan Gàidheal. In addition to programming designed to nourish, enrich, and continue the training needs of this unique group of traditional arts educators, step dance teachers from across Scotland also had the rare opportunity to connect with their colleagues and cast a new vision for sustainability, preservation, creativity, and community-building for traditional dance in Scotland. Delegates from Inverness, Aberdeen, Islay, South Uist, Midlothian, Skye, Perth, Edinburgh, Glasgow, Dunfermline, and Fort William were in attendance. It was both incredibly exciting and immensely humbling for me to be in the presence of so many knowledgeable and devoted traditional arts educators. There were so many lively discussions, connections, and conversations around step dance education that I hope will continue!! Driving home, I felt invigorated, inspired by the rich traditions and inspiringly devoted dancers here in Scotland, and filled with hope.

(Delegates at Casting a New Vision for Step Dance Education in Scotland: a Day of Conversation and Professional Development, Perth Theatre, 24 February)

On Monday morning I flew to Shannon, Ireland where I had the pleasure of taking part in Common Treads, a two-day event celebrating diversity within percussive dance styles from Ireland, Britain and North America at the Irish World Academy, University of Limerick. Convened by Dr. Mats Melin and Dr. Orfhlaith Ní Bhriain, the event assembled a remarkable summit of dancers including Liam Scanlon, Marianne Larose, Jimmy Smith, Toby Bennett, and myself. It was wonderful to return to the Irish World Academy, a space that was incredibly formative for me as place of study, of collaboration, of exploration, and of tremendous possibility. The building itself was often referred to as a “house of light and welcome” by the late founder Mícheál Ó’ Súilleabháin (1) Made of glass, brass, and sparkling mosaic, it beckons partitioners and scholars across the Shannon River from the UL campus to collapse the false binary of research and art, the practical and the poetic, in favour of a more holistically-integrated encounter. I had the distinct pleasure of being present for all of the masterclasses and what a feast it was: from Liam Scanlon’s satisfyingly percussive earthiness, Marianne Larose’s grace, strength, and dexterity, Jimmy Smith’s magical fool-the-eye, trick-of-the-leg winking insouciance, and Toby Bennett’s elegant, buoyant, bracingly articulate clog dancing. I spent my session sharing percussive dance vocabulary as well as speaking about utilizing these steps with the musicians that I have the pleasure to engage with in making concerts. The event was very special indeed, allowing me to reconnected with mentors, be in conversation with colleagues, as well as engage with the bright and extremely talented students at the Irish World Academy.

(Working with the students at the Irish World Academy, University of Limerick, photo by Mats Melin)

These are rich times indeed. And it’s not over yet! TONIGHT, I travel by train to Aberdeen for a weekend of percussive dance workshops and performances organized by Jennifer Oag and Feerochie featuring Kae Sakurai, Aneta Dortova, and Toby Bennett! Hope to see you in that great Granite city this weekend! It all kicks off tomorrow night!

Saturday, 2 March: Percussive Dance Performance with Nic Gareiss & Friends at FoodStory, 13-5 Thistle St., Aberdeen, 8 pm. More info here.

Sunday 3 March: workshops at Academy of Expressive Arts, 8 Gaelic Lane, Aberdeen:

12-1 pm Introduction to Scottish Step Dance with Kae Sakurai, more info here.

1:15-2:15 pm Dance the Tune with Nic Gareiss, more info here.

2:30-3:30 pm Lakeland Stepping with Toby Bennett, more info here.

3:45-4:45 pm Sean-nós Dance with Aneta Dortova, more info here.

(1) Comhrá: A Conversation with Mícheál Ó’ Súilleabháin, by Anya Peterson Royce, COMHAIMSEARTHA: Of Our Times, Spring 2019, p. 8

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firstfootingscotland · 6 years ago

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Shuffles at Féis Lochabair

Greetings from Lansing where I am spending a few days before heading to Washington and Oregon for shows with banjo-player Allison de Groot. While Scotland is feeling more and more like home, it's wonderful to pay a visit to the state of Michigan where I grew up for a mouthful of dry cold air and lots and LOTS of snow!

Before returning to the United States I had the pleasure of spending Saturday, February 9 working with step dancers from Fèis Lochabair in Fort William. Fèisean nan Gàidheal have been incredibly supportive partners in the First Footing residency, facilitating interaction with dancers from across their national network. I was eager to get to interact with dancers from this community as I boarded the train from Edinburgh at 7:15am on Saturday morning.

The trip was quiet until six bearded men in all-weather gear boarded the train an hour into the journey. As big men are wont to do, they straddled the aisle, taking up two tables on the train with backpacks and crampons. Amid their outdoor accoutrement, soon their table was also strewn with cans of Tennents lager and empty crisp bags as they laughed and boisterously chatted to the trolley hostess. They played pipe band renditions of "Amazing Grace" and pop versions of "Caledonia" on repeat on the speaker of their smartphones as we sped northward through the Trossachs, through Rannach, Corrour, and Roy Bridge. Here the men rowdily disembarked, pouring out of the train still singing and I presume in search of hills to walk and bothies to nap in while the rest of the train rode on in silence until we reached Fort William. As I alighted from the train, the sunlight made the snow on the mountains sparkle in the afternoon light. Shortly I was picked up opposite the train station and whisked away by car to work with the dancers of Fèis Lochabair.

(Snow on the mountains en route to Féis Lochabair)

Dancer and dance teacher Jane Douglas hosted me incredibly warmly, greeting me as the enduring afternoon rays streamed in through the windows of the bright community centre. As the dancers arrived, I felt very lucky indeed to meet such a welcoming group of movers. The first class, specifically for dancers in under the age of eighteen, impressed me with their crisp percussive articulation and their astute timing. After warming up, I led the group through a series of step dance combinations that I hoped would be both stimulating and challenging. I was startled by their verve; they were eager, even willing to execute the steps one at a time in a circle consecutively as we endeavoured to dance as one, each dancer continuing the phrase where the previous left off. "As though we were singing a song or playing a tune together," I told them. Soon we were passing steps back and forth around the circle together, working to maintain a consistent dynamic and tempo.

(Working with a group of students and their instructor Jane Douglas during my February 9 visit to Féis Lochabair)

Over the course of the class, I began to get a sense for the patterns of footwork the dancers were familiar with. When teaching I find it takes some time for me to observe and process the specific step conventions the students have previously been exposed to; to gain a sense through of their movement history as we dance together. For me, the goal then is to share material that departs from these physical patterns or builds on them to break physical patterns, proposing new physical possibilities. For example, this group was familiar with the common step dance pre-fix of audibly placing weight on one foot, brushing the opposing foot forwards and backwards striking the floor once in each direction, hopping on the weight-bearing foot, and tapping with toe of the non-weight-bearing foot. "Step, shuffle, hop, tap." The convention of hopping after the shuffle is found throughout many step dance forms and as I watched the practiced ease with which the dancers demonstrated this step, I could tell it was a gesture their bodies were comfortable with from their great work with Jane!

I hypothesized internally that a similar step convention with a slightly different use of weight would be challenging but also help develop new neural pathways and motor skills among the students. To that end, I suggested the dancers try a step with a similar beginning, again audibly placing weight on one foot, brushing the opposing foot forwards and backwards striking the floor once in each direction, and instead of hopping on the first, weight-bearing foot, rocking back and placing weight on the shuffling foot, then finally stepping again with the first weight-bearing foot. "Step, shuffle-ball, change." While this step enunciates same number of sounds, it uses a slightly different use of weight.... and shifting weight is what step dance is all about! This new step proved to be a challenge but the students took it up swiftly. After a few repetitions, suddenly the class was collectively departing from well-worn physical patterns, using their weight percussively in new ways.

(My second group of students with their instructor Jane Douglas during my February 9 visit to Féis Lochabair)

The second group of students, all adults this time, smiled encouragingly as I thanked them for attending and for welcoming me so warmly to their community. We began the second workshop by warming up and then working through a series of exercises reconsidering the dynamic possibilities of one particular step dance rudiment: the shuffle.

(Diagram 11.1 from Flett & Flett’s 1964 book, Traditional Dance in Scotland)

Shown above in a digram from Flett & Flett's 1964 book Traditional Dance in Scotland, this step is comprised of a swinging brush contacting the floor in a forward motion, followed by a retraction, brushing the floor as the foot returns. The shuffle is a two-way exchange of energy directed through the foot, striking the ground twice in action and reaction.

In my ethnographic work, I've encountered many gestures that employ a similar pendulum-like step dance rudiment with diverse names: Flett & Flett call it a “treeple.” In tap dance they’re called "shuffles," while in Appalachian clogging, they are referred to as "double-toes," "rallies," "trebles," or "batters" in Irish step dance, “látigo” (Spanish for "whip") in flamenco, and “frotté” (in French, literally, "to rub") in Quebecois gigue.

In addition to its wide geographic dispersions and culturally-specific meanings, this step is also an incredibly malleable rudiment. It can be altered in many ways, including changing which parts of the foot contact the floor, shifting the rhythmic feel of the shuffle, the step's metre, and even its timbre. After discussing, demonstrating, and having the students embody these various axis of variation during Saturday's class, I asked each student to dance two shuffles with the stipulation that could be similar or contrasting) and instructed the group to repeat them. In addition to a few giggles, this exercise also usually yields some really interesting variations in the infinite variability of the step. This workshop was no exception! My hope in sharing the exercise was that the dancers might reconsider the shuffle's many possibilities, identifying their own tacit presuppositions about the step or biases based upon culturally-specific experiences of the different ways the shuffle functions in percussive dance forms. (1) I've found this strategy consistently helps students discover something new in a step they may have known for many years. I was certainly not disappointed as the dancers extemporized new combinations of shuffles that I had never seen!

After the workshop, a quick rest, and a bite to eat, I was one again whisked to the next event, a cèilidh benefiting Fèis Lochabair at the Ben Nevis Distillery. There, musicians from the Fèis Lochabair Cèilidh Trail set up the PA, called the dances, and performed for and with one another as students from Jane's school performed both highland and step dance pieces. Afterwards, I took to the floor myself to perform two short solo sets. (After which one attendee remarked, "that was proper Brechtian theatre with step dance!")

(Dancers at the February 9 Féis Lochabair cèilidh at the Ben Nevis Distillery)

As I watched dancers sashay through a Virginia Reel at the end of the night, I couldn't help but genuflect on the opportunity to share steps and shapes here. It had been a full, rich day, and I wouldn’t have had it any other way. As I sped southward on the train towards Edinburgh the following morning, the sweet sounds of pipes, piano accordion, mandolin and dancing feet ringing in my ears, I was very grateful indeed to have spent a day dancing in the shadow of Ben Nevis among the rich community of Fèis Lochabair.

(1) This method of teaching and creating is largely informed by the work of philosopher Michel Foucault, especially the way that his writing explicates and reveals the power of tacit presuppositions. Here I apply this to step dance pedagogy: What do we presume about a step, about its morphology, its utilization. Once we identify the assumptions we've made, it's possible for us to explore new movement possibilities that critique or work against those presuppositions. For more on this, see Michel Foucault's 1969 book, The Archeology of Knowledge.

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