Giants of Foudland 3x48 R

I tried this with my class last Friday and it was a success! We did it first as a strathspey, as most of the class weren’t familiar with Schiehallion reels, then as a reel. They seemed to like it better as a strathspey, but that was probably due to the weather (30C!) and the lovely slow air we danced it to (Crathes Castle - didn’t have much choice, it’s the only 48-bar strathspey recording I have). We’ll definitely be doing it again (at the proper tempo).

I am trying to list all the triangular Scottish country dances for performance purposes. So far I have only found this one and ths Wind on Loch Fyne.
By the way has anyone suggested that the men’s and ladies’ hands across in bars 9-16 and 17-24 might flow a bit better if they went the other way?
Regards, bi

At the end of bar 8 everyone has just turned their partners RH and are facing them, so it’s natural for the men to pass their partners RS on bar 9. On bar 12 the men are facing clockwise and continue to dance in that direction.

Similarly, the ladies are facing anticlockwise on bar 20 and continue to dance in that direction.

The original idea was that the movement within these phrases should be in one direction only, reflecting the smooth travel of a wind turbine, so a change of direction after 4 bars would spoil this effect.

Other 3 couple dances in triangular sets are McPherson’s Jig and Indian River Strathspey. A new book which will shortly be available from the Aurora dance group (www.aurorascot.org.uk) includes The Bermuda Triangle.

I adapted this dance as the finale for a demo dance we do to Nelson Mandela’s Welcome to the City of Glasgow. You can see a "flash mob" version of the dance at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JXpohSuIajY

I was looking for something that could be done by 3 or 4 couples one time through. I wanted set to and turn corners so I replaced the formation in the first 8 bars with set to and turn corners and then swapped that 8 bars with the second 8 bars so that it would flow better.

After practicing the 3 and 4 couple version, we realized that it would work for as many as 6-7 couples. In the video above we had 7 couples. Its loads of fun to dance the Schiehallion reels with lots of couples.

Great dance, lots of fun!

Patty