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.