I attended a dance in Kirkwall at the legion one June night, and observed that dancing there is more like a team sport than the one on one up close and personal type of dancing here. There is "plays" involved, not unlike rugby. Thankfully, towards the end of the night, they played a few familiar 60's r and b tunes from over here, so I didn't feel like a total fish on the beach. The very lovely lady I was with was from over here (US actually), but she obviously spent lots of time at these things in Orkney, because she had all that footwork memory work down, and recognized all the names for the various labeled team footwork workouts without a play book. I declined most of the contrived group dances, fearing an anxiety attack when my unfamiliar feet would become entangled at this strange initiation stage. Not unlike our western square dancing to some degree I thought. Sadly, there did not seem to be many young folk floating around the floor. In the many journals written of our Orcadians here in the far north, at York Factory for instance, special occasions or just impromptu meetings of the fur brigades, would be reason enough to engage in some sort of serious party, where the fiddles howled and the spirits of those free living couriers let loose for hours on end, the strange sounds rising into the cool north air under an umbrella of a million twinkling stars. Joseph Isbister was one that encouraged these regular "blowouts" that included native indian maidens by the score and any of the french courier du bois on hand. Company rum and brandy flowed. The dances were raucous and physical in the extreme. The numerous accounts of these bushland blowouts describe in detail the mood and atmosphere and the colourful clothing including the moccasins and the deer hides on the local maidens. Those basic musical tendencies were passed down through Orcadian and French Canadian families here for many generations. My grandfather, a northerner, could play the fiddle, the guitar and a thing called an autoharp and the harmonica as well as the jew's harp and the spoons. The entire family were musical. I still have my grandfather's fiddle. Has someone produced a good cd based on Orkney song and dance? Personally, my late wife and I always enjoyed the good old north american "up close and personal" dance style, depicted so well in the movie dirty dancin'. The final couple of dances in Krikwall that night were of this type, and while the locals seemed to dance to those old sixties tunes, I could see that they were more used to that patterned group stuff. I was revived and invigorated at the ability of my partner that night, in her native dirty dancin' mode, and so sadly those tunes from over here were played at the end of the night, and I was soon shot out onto that Kirkwall street feeling just a wee bit deprived wanting to latch onto my little yankee, and dance down the dark damp street. Funny that after just half of a 60's r and b tune, how in step and comfortable we were, and we both knew it. It was a happy note to end on and a great place to pick up on n the future. May the world keep on dancin'! Cheers....Tanglefoot