Blocking the block

From Phone Shots

Huge crowd just meandered past on our street. They must be heading to a game at Europark. Lazy Sunday afternoon no more: They were setting off loud firecrackers.

Me, a Scottish Country Dance teacher?

 Excerpt from "Home Movies" featuring an important Highland Dance moment in TV history:

(The full episode of "Cho and Amy Lee" is available on Youtube)

I can relate a lot to Coach McGuirk's nostalgiac pangs when thinking back to his time as a Scottish Highland Dancer. I didn't have an overbearing coach like he did, but I did spend a lot of time in high school in a kilt, and I liked it that way--dancing for competition, for performances in bars and school convocations, and for practice brought me great joy and fulfillment, and allowed me to make some of the best friends a person could have asked for.

But there was a darker side to my love of Scottish Highland Dance--the prejudice against the related dance form, Scottish Country Dance.  (If you don't know the difference, no worries: the key is that Highland usually requires you to dance alone and wear a kilt, while SCD dancers can wear dresses (women) or kilts (men) and usually always dance with a partner). We agile, powerful leapers looked looked down our noses at the seemingly stiff, aging crowd doing the decidedly less hard-core form of dance. That dance was for sissies, Scotland-nuts, grandpas and grandmas, and anyone not good enough for Highland.

As a proud Scottish Highland Dancer, I remember my unbridled disrespect for the SCD performances at our annual Burns' Night Celebration. Granted, I was never rude outright, but disparaging remarks and witty putdowns were definitely said between friends.  It wasn't about character, or about personality, it was about style and honor: that just wasn't dance.

Stick envy! Me competing in the jig in Scotland, Stirling 2004

Well, I retired my kilt long ago, but I never gave up my love for dance and for Scottish culture. So when I came to Austria for the first time, I couldn't believe my eyes when I saw an advertisement for a local SCD group. I knew I had to join: sure, moments of my previous disdain flashed through my thought process when considering the group, but growing up has a way of erasing a lot of petty teenage stigmas, including the one I had against SCD.

I joined the group and learned that while very different, it provides its own joys and opportunities for performance and making friends. The SCD community, like the Highland community, is a world-wide group of kind, interesting, and quirky people, a group I'm happy to be part of. In this way, SCD became a fixture of my abroad experience and my fellow dancers became some of my closest friends in Austria.

 Getting ready to film a video of one of our dances, part of The Flying Scotsman SCD Group, 2009

Now that I'm back, I try to go to the group as often as I can, although that usually ends up being only twice a month. And I've even taken it to the next level: This year, in an attempt to give back to the community in the Lungau, I'm teaching a 10-week course on Scottish Country Dance in Tamsweg. I couldn't do it without the help of my dance friend and mentor, Regina, or the support of my teachers here who connected me with the right people to make my idea a reality. And I also couldn't do it without my amazing years learning dance technique and forms as a Scottish Highland Dancer.

Maybe younger me would do a spit-take if she knew I were teaching SCD, but I think she'd also be happy that I found some way to keep the Scottish dance spirit alive, and not just in memory.

Bedridden no more

Last Thursday, I woke up with a lung-lacerating cough that turned into a fever by noon, and a full-blown flu by 1. I stayed in bed nearly the entire time since then until today, and let me tell you: it sucked.

Of course, being sick can sometimes have its upsides: who didn't secretly enjoy getting to skip school and watch Price Is Right reruns with a bowl of jello in hand?



Or, have Peter Falk read you a story that has everything one could want. As you wish!

But not when it's anything worse than the common cold, or when one is over the age of say, 13. After that, for me, being sick didn't mean getting to skip, it means missing out. This week was no different. I missed a ceilidh in Upper Austria, something I had been looking forward to as a highlight of the semester, and a ski trip with one of my schools, which would probably have been my second and last time skiing this year.

One thing sickness couldn't keep me from: texting and aim chat on my phone. Although it was sometimes a stretch to coerce my fuzzy mind to form words from letters, it was my only contact to life (read: George) beyond napping and watching pirated movies.

Being sick abroad does come with one other perk: the opportunity to learn about interesting new healthcare protocols (although at the time I could not have cared less who walked through that door and what he/she said, as long as it meant relief from my pain). This sickness allowed me my first-ever house call from the kindly old local doc, complete with feathery gray hair, crystal blue eyes, and a cute chestnut brown leather doctor's kit. He was very sweet and even shook my hand at the beginning and end of the check-up, lending sick monster me two moments in which to feel human again.

My fairy godmother in it all was my housemate, Marlies, who called Dr. Sweet'olguy and also went to get my meds for me. Only one of my prescriptions was exotic: the codeine drops for my cough, which had to be shaken from an unwieldy little brown apothecary's bottle and tasted faintly like Novocain.

But enough complaining and pity-wallowing--I'm feeling much better today and that means I'm back to the Interwebs again. Now to get back to work....