STRETCHING is good for keeping you fit and healthy during 2023 !

 I WISH YOU PEACE and HAPPINESS during 2023.

I stretch out several times each week to keep my body supple, and my back straight. Over Christmas, my grand daughter Emmy (aged four) joined in: “Yoga with Grandpa” is what Emmy called it. I call this specific workout “airplanes.” To keep flying, Emmy needs to grasp my feet with her bent knees …. a skill she has yet to perfect.

Health pages in newspapers and magazines frequently debate the benefits (or not) of stretching. Claims that “stretching does not help avoid strains and sprains,” refer to sports like jogging, where warming-up is included in the very act of starting to jog.

Stretching is definitely good before and after dancing. The Royal Scottish Country Dance Society has promoted warm-ups for 100 years. Founder Miss Jean Milligan was a sports teacher.

Anyone watching professional athletes before a match, will see them warming up to loosen their feet and ankles, stretching leg and arm and back muscles to reduce the risk of injury. Claims that stretching has no value, make little sense to me.

In any sport that requires your muscles to make sudden and unusual muscle movements – like dancing a pas de basque – it is beneficial to warm your muscles and joints beforehand. That is why we do RSCDS warm-up exercises before classes: we tune-up the feet and ankles, knees and hips, back and shoulders, calves and hamstrings ….. and then we start our evening with a gentle dance: maybe a waltz, or a reel where we start by walking and warm up to gentle dance steps.

DANCING IS GOOD FOR YOU ! STRETCHING IS GOOD TOO !

Dr Samantha Smith a specialist in clinical orthopaedics at the Yale School of Medicine, is in favor of the RSCDS style of stretching (even if Samantha herself has never heard of RSCDS !!!). In Hannah Seo’s end-of-year article in the New York Times, Dr Smith says stretching can loosen tight muscles. 

These days, if I do not stretch out before I go to bed, my evening of Scottish dancing will give me cramps in the night. In fact I sleep with woolen stockings after dancing to ensure my calf muscles do not seize up, and I wear  my warm Xmas slippers. So Happy Holidays: stretch to stay fit and healthy !

Teaching Children to dance on St Andrews Day !

 Happy St Andrews Day, folks !

St Andrew was crucified on a cross of this shape, and he became the Patron Saint of Scotland when the Greek missionary St Regulus landed in 345 A.D. on the East Coast of Fife with St Andrew's bones  in a bag. A whole series of miracles: firstly, that the Emperor Constatine decided to send a missionary to Alba. It was a miracle that St Andrews's bones were available; and that the Holy Roman Empire wanted to send them to Northern Europe. A miracle that St Regulus (also called St Rule) reached Scotland. A miracle that he decided (and was able) to sail past Arran, Mull, Skye and Orkney to reach Fife .... so many unlikely miracles that the city of St Andrews (where he landed) deserves its worldwide fame.  

If you can spin this yarn, the story should motivate children to listen .... and maybe to dance!  Kids live a bit of gore and torture. so offer them this Spanish Inquisition version of St Andrew's martyrdom. 

At the RSCDS Autumn Gathering on Nov 5th, there was a meeting of the Youth Committee which provided some helpful insights on teaching young people:  children will find it tough to attend a weekly class because they have so many other things going on. Young people will enjoy a day-school; a dance camp; a Ceilidh.with a bonfire ...  And they should also enjoy dancing with their families. That is how I learned dancing: dancing with my parents because dancing is a part of our Scottish culture.

In France, I link dance to English teaching. I visit school classrooms to tell them about Scotland and kilts and dancing. I use two songs with vocabulary useful for 9-year-olds: You canna shove yer Granny off the Bus and Ten Green Bottles Hanging on a Wall ....  taught with illustrations drawn on sheets of paper.  Other verses: You can shove you silly sister off the train. You can push your boring brother off his bike. You can throw your ugly uncle from a plane. All good vocabulary, with laughter.

The kids enjoy the songs and they love dancing! I start by dancing a circle using slip-step. We get the feel of reel-time music by clapping. Then we dance The Cumberland Reel. with pas chassé = the traveling step in reel time .... but I spend very little time on footwork. We must focus on The Joy Of Dance and Music.  To reinforce this, I move on to The Virginia Reel and Thread The Needle. Everyone enjoys those dances. 

Try it yourselves.

Nicola Benedetti and music in Scotland

 

Scottish Music and Nicola Benedetti

 

Nicola Benedetti is a charming genius. She began playing music aged 4, and she told the BBC  programme The Cultural Life that she first learned violin using a Suzuki Method, while a child living in Ayrshire.  With Suzuki, you learn to play a tune immediately: so you begin with MUSIC and not with sterile scales. Since the violin can be rather screechy, learning a tune is important.

 

 

Personally, I was given musical scales to practise at school, aged 10. I learned nothing about music, and my piano lessons ended within 6 months. My kids learned piano using the Suzuki Method, and they can still play tunes even though they no longer play the piano. Thank you, Mrs Atwood!  Of course I am NOT comparing my children with Nicola Benedetti, who is one of the world’s greatest violinists.  At age ten, she went to the Yehudi Menuhin School in Surrey, in southern England – tough to be sent so young to a “boarding school” .... even if the musicality of Menuhin and their shared passion of music carried her through.  Menuhin was possibly the greatest violinist, and the greatest music teacher, of the 20th century.

 

Benedetti led the National Children's Orchestra of Great Britain at the age of eight; she had passed eight years of musical examinations a year later.

 

With my friends Alan and Margery Falconer, I went to hear a Nicola concert in Glasgow, playing Vivaldi with some of the Scottish string musicians who are playing in this version of Vivaldi: a delightful short recording (even worth seeing for her very spectacular dress).

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qpbpaivtKas

 

Here is Nicola Benedetti playing Loch Lomond at the spectacular opening of the 2021 Commonwealth Games in Glasgow.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rYn61MHU_QY

 

Like Nicola, I am very interested in music (and dance) education. Every child should play an instrument. If they can do it in Venezuela (and they do), they could do it also in Europe.

 

And every child should learn to dance.

Dance is a physical expression of music.

 

Nicola's motto is "Enhance your own ability, be the best you can be – but don’t keep that for yourself. Share it, expose it, give it and try to enrich other people with what you have managed to achieve."  That is exactly how I consider my modest ability to dance. I try to dance MORE and BETTER, and I try to share with others – and especially with children - the joy of dance and music.

 

        Nicola Benedetti was awarded the distinguished C.B.E. medal by Her Majesty The Queen.
 

 

Nicola Benedetti’s most famous recent recording (Grammy Award) came from her collaboration with the modern composer Wynton Marsalis.  Try out this visit to Dallas, Texas:

 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Nl5baizlykA

and then this Violin Concerto in D Major by Wynton Marsalis: 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lTsAkAHMvf4  

 

Wynton Marsalis is both composer and trumpeter: with fiddler Nicola Benedetti.

Nicola's fiddle is a Stradivarius said to be worth $5 million: a gift from a banker.

Teaching our Chrildren to Dance keeps them healthy and anchored in their culture.

 

 

This delightful picture from the website of the CLUARAN website (the Scottish dance group in St Louis, on the Golfe de Morbihan in Southern Brittany) shows both the joy of dancing, and my passion for teaching children to dance. Dance brings children great fun, joyful laughter, a sense of achievement, good body posture and healthy exercise. What's not to like?  Dancing has been enhanced by the success of TV programs like Dancing with the Stars (USA) and Strictly Come Dancing (in UK) and films like Billy Elliot about a boy who wanted to dance .... and maybe by huge stage successes like Hamilton, The Lion King and West Side Story that include dancing as an integral part of their whole story. Even boys!

 

We have forgotten the cultural importance of dancing - which was traditionally linked to the masculine skills of fencing -  in European life. In Africa dancing is an integral part of daily life. This used to be true in Europe. Entertainment was poetry and music, song and dance. Now we consume entertainment on a box, while sinking unhealthily into our armchairs. In the New Year : teach children to dance! 

Here is an RSCDS picture of The Triumph danced around 1841. Our heritage!
 

 

 

RSCDS Breton Branch danced in Josselin on Sunday 13th June 2021 HURRAH!

 

WE DID DANCE AGAIN : RSCDS Breton Branch danced in Josselin on Sunday 13th June 2021

As soon as French government rules allowed outside gatherings, the Breton Branch members came together to dance in the beautiful medieval city of Josselin, where - as ever - Branch President Dr Penny Gibbs was a generous host.

Dance teacher Anne MacLennan provided a set of easy dances suitable for beginners with slow feet, and also for advanced dancers using their rusty feet undanced for the past 18 months. Dancing outside on an earth surface with small pebbles, we chose to wear sports shoes instead of ballet pumps or ghillies. This was a good surface for dancing.

 

 

 

May 2021 Elections in a dis-United Kingdom. Scottish Independence now more likely?

 

May 2021 Elections in UK have been curious and - in a strange way - a call for stability. The voters in London, Manchester, Liverpool, North-West England, Wales and Scotland have all voted to keep the people who are managing the pandemic, to "build back better" (as the Americans say). Journalists are calling these the "Thank You" elections. The SNP held Scotland, Labour held Wales, most elected mayors (London, Manchester, etc) were re-elected .... and when journalists like Andrew Marr (this Sunday morning) obsess about the likelihood of a second Scottish referendum on Independence, they join the SNP obsession. Yet that was NOT the main subject of this election. Andrew Marr succeeded in making the appalling Conservative Michael Gove sound quite reasonable.

                                         New Statesman photo of Scottish support for the EU

Brexit Gove (from Aberdeen) pointed out that the total number of votes cast across Scotland for parties NOT pushing a referendum (Conservative, Labour, Liberal) was larger than the number of votes cast for SNP and Greens who support a second referendum. Even though the Scottish National Party won a large mandate. 'First Past the Post' is not the best form of democracy.  Meanwhile Nicola Sturgeon, Scotland's Chief Minister, has decreed that the EU flag will continue to fly in Scotland. Good decision!

Nicola Sturgeon is Britain's most impressive politician: but my admiration for her does not mean that I  agree with her on all decisions. Scotland's (and Britain's) experience with referendums was not happy. Referendums are so divisive, they are bad. Independence may or may not be a good idea for Scotland; but a referendum would be terrible!  Families were bitterly divided last time, friendships became strained, husbands and wives were unable to talk over breakfast because the binary Yes-No choice overwhelmed so many vast complications involved in the idea of separating the Union. "Yes...but" or "No, but..." discussions were eliminated.  And yet .... I would be Scottish and European .....

I would rather be dancing than voting. Maybe we shall dance before the end of May.... 

..... dancing out of doors, but I plan to wear the kilt.

 

Dancing is precious: we shall dance in 2021 !

 

 Happy New Year  -  Bonne Année 2021 - aw sanbé sanbé  -  Frohes neues Jahr  - Bloavez Mad! 

Would you believe that?  My New Year gift (actually Xmas) is a TREADMILL. In British and American history, the treadmill's miserable history illustrates the awfulness of English values.

In 1817, millwright/engineer William Cubitt saw prisoners sitting idle. Instead of training or useful work,  he invented the tread-mill to “reform offenders by teaching them habits of industry.” 19th-century penal treadmills were wide wheels fitted with steps. Prisoners sentenced to “hard labour” would climb the steps repeatedly, causing the entire wheel to rotate. The penal treadmill was “the perfect punishment” by Victorian standards: useless but exhausting task that fitted with Victorian ideals about atonement achieved through hard work. Merciless hard work. The "Workhouses" used them as well, creating "work" for the "idle poor" ..... never wondering whether the wealthy were responsible for their poverty, the misery of rickets, the brutality of child labor. Some treadmills were used to grind corn. Others were simply a waking, walking hell. I once tried it in a museum. It was horrible.

Oscar Wilde walked a treadmill in Pentonville Prison as part of his 1895 hard labour sentence and it almost killed him. He left prison in 1897 and died just two years later, aged 46. The Society for the Improvement of Prison Discipline called them a “preventative punishment” .... the priggish rich thought that no-one who experienced the treadmill would ever want to commit another crime. If they did - like stealing a loaf of bread to feed starving infants - then they were transported to Georgia or to Australia.

The ghastly penal treadmills were abolished in Britain in 1902. 

 And now I have bought a treadmill.  I prefer to call it a "skiing machine" but "a rose by any other name doth smell as sweet" write Shakespeare.

My wife thinks walking a treadmill will "serve me right" .... and if I a am able to lose some of my 'Covid Bonus' of 10 pounds, then she will be proved correct!  My kilt will tell me, whenever I am able to dance. SO LET US PRAY: for dancing and for losing some of those pounds.

 

St Andrews Day, Nov 30th: since we cannot dance, let us celebrate with this portrait of Bonny Prince Charlie, leader of the 1745 rebellion against England's imported German kings from Hanover. Prince Charles Edward Stuart is kissing the hand of Flora MacDonald .... the lady who helped the prince escape Over The Sea To Skye after his defeat by "Butcher Cumberland" (son of George II) at the Battle of Culloden on 15th April 1746. That was the end of the Stuart challenge. Bonny Prince Charlie lived the rest of his life in France, and is buried in the chapel of the Scottish College, beside the Sorbonne.
 

Remembering my lovely sister Alana

 My Sister Alana - sweet memories 

In 1989 we had a family holiday in Scotland - in the Highlands with my brother Rory and sister Alana, posing here with Catherine Leila and baby Timothy. We camped, we explored the midges of Skye, we climbed Ben Nevis, we helped our Hanlon friends with a flood in Paisley, we had a wonderful time .... such as I have had with my wee sister Alana since she was born in 1948. She became a nurse, a midwife, a matron, a health visitor and a community leader in Wiltshire, the beautiful county where she lived in a medieval village near Salisbury Cathedral. Alana was a lay pastoral assistant in the Anglican diocese, everybody's favourite aunt and an all-around good Christian person who was loved by everybody. Leukemia got the better of her and she died on October 1st. We shall miss her a lot.

Alana wanted donations to be given to Cancer Research.  

This lovely, warm picture of contentment shows Alana - who was a wonderful cook - celebrating her birthday on 2010 with her dearest friend Louisa, and some "fine cuisine" in elegant surroundings. We pray that her surroundings today are celestial, affording her infinite peace.

So France has begun a cautious deconfinement, while UK and USA blunder their way forward into more death and infection. But what I wanna know is WHEN can we DANCE again???? Here is an inspired vision by artist Janet McCrorie of "Pink Mist" (this is the Scottish concept of "Mist" and not the German meaning) where I can envision myself as the man in the kilt .... probably a Scottish waltz on an American dance floor with twirling and swirling. And who would be my partner?

Highland Dance is strong and elegant, and quite different from the country dances I most enjoy. I used to enjoy Highland when I still had a youthful spring in my step. Now that I can only lift myself one inch off the ground, I have established the rule that I will demonstrate Highland only to people sitting in wheelchairs. When we raise our arms in Highland, we are imitating the antlers of a great stag - from which it become obvious that this was a male hunters' style of dancing. In this painting, Janet McCrorie shows very well the youth as well as the strength of the dancers. Who are female. In my book I DANCE THEREFORE I AM, you will meet many great female dancers including some who teach Highland and Ladies' Step Dancing which a related genre. So much fun !

 Dancing has started again after the Summer break. Dancing with young people (even with very young people) is not only important, but lovely to do. My book (below) argues that dance teachers should commit to teaching children as well as adults, or they should not receive RSCDS certificates
because we are killing the dance culture that we love if we do not teach our kids. My children Edward and Catherine (shown on the book cover) dance very well. So should all our children.
This book is full of wisdom and dancing, stories and laughter: the perfect gift for your friends.

Another beautiful dance painting BEFORE YOUR EYES by Janet McCrorie, whose art I am privileged to show you. Like my amusing book I DANCE THEREFORE I AM, sales of Janet McCrorie's paintings and elegant greetings cards benefit the Royal Scottish Country Dance Society of which we are proud members - in my own case, a Life Member since 1967 when I was still a student at St Andrews University dancing every week with the university's Celtic Society. I still send occasional donations to the Celtic Society, to encourage the art and practice and joy of DANCING among young people! I have a lifetime of pleasure on the dance floor.  My own children Catherine Leila and Edward can be seen dancing on the cover of my book: the perfect gift for a dance friend.