Folklore: Grinning Highland Dancers

Subject: Folklore: Grinning Highland Dancers
From: meself
Date: 28 Aug 11 - 03:07 PM

Yesterday I found myself (there I was!) watching a bit of a Highland Dance competition, for the first time in about forty years. Nothing much had changed, as far as I could see - except that, when the girls - they were all girls - would do their stylized bow at the beginning and end of a dance, they would suddenly force a big ear-to-ear grin - before reverting to the default countenance of sobriety if not gloom that one has grown to know and love.

Question: Has this become the norm? Has someone been telling these somber innocents that the judges award points for idiot grins - and do the judges now do so?

Subject: RE: Folklore: Grinning Highland Dancers
From: greg stephens
Date: 28 Aug 11 - 03:43 PM

I blame the Americans.

Subject: RE: Folklore: Grinning Highland Dancers
From: GUEST,Ebor_Fiddler
Date: 28 Aug 11 - 04:52 PM

Indeed, why not?

Subject: RE: Folklore: Grinning Highland Dancers
From: Jack Campin
Date: 28 Aug 11 - 04:59 PM

There is a dance instructor in Edinburgh who gets her proteges to do that. Not being Scottish I don't think she's ever got the meaning of the word "glaikit".

Subject: RE: Folklore: Grinning Highland Dancers
From: GUEST,leeneia
Date: 28 Aug 11 - 10:15 PM

18 years ago, my niece, who was only 7 years old, was dancing at an Irish step dance competition. She lost her place, knew it, and 'looked crestfallen.' Or so her mother told me. And she added, "The judges take off for that."

I consider that neurotic behavior.

It seemed that in all the competititions, the girls were supposed to smile, smile, smile. Yuck.

Subject: RE: Folklore: Grinning Highland Dancers
From: MorwenEdhelwen1
Date: 28 Aug 11 - 11:46 PM

As I have mild cerebral palsy and a) have never wanted to be a dancer as I wouldn't want to practice enough and would find it much more difficult than the average amateur dancer of any form of dance to reach competition/recital/professional/semi-professional standard and b)don't know much about Irish/Scottish dancing, can someone tell me why smiling dancers are considered unusual?

Subject: RE: Folklore: Grinning Highland Dancers
From: meself
Date: 29 Aug 11 - 12:29 AM

To me, simply because they are unusual, in my rather limited experience - and I'm talking only about what's known as Highland Dancing. I saw a lot of it when I was a kid - my sister along with many girls in the neighbourhood spent a few years at it. And these girls rarely if ever smiled in the course of a performance, and no one expected or asked them to.

Subject: RE: Folklore: Grinning Highland Dancers
From: McGrath of Harlow
Date: 29 Aug 11 - 02:57 PM

Almost as bad as waving the arms around in the air...

Subject: RE: Folklore: Grinning Highland Dancers
From: Megan L
Date: 29 Aug 11 - 03:02 PM

Ach McGrath yer jist jealous ma loon ye ken fine theres nivir bin wan o thon Irish dancers whit kid haud a canle tae the Scottish sword dancer :)

Subject: RE: Folklore: Grinning Highland Dancers
From: GUEST,Eliza
Date: 29 Aug 11 - 03:06 PM

Have just watched the Edinburgh Tattoo on TV, the Highland dancers all grinned maniacally throughout their dances (in the pouring rain) It did look a bit weird. I can't remember the smiles when I lived up there in the sixties and seventies, and I watched many Highland dancing events.