Highland Dance Compared To Scottish Country Dance

Modern Highland dance was developed in the Scottish Highlands during the 19th and 20th centuries. Primarily performed at public events, particularly Highland games, this dance form combines elements from Gaelic folk dance with formalized ballet conventions.

Accompanied by Highland bagpipe music, Highland dancers execute intricate footwork on the balls of their feet. Their movements extend beyond the lower body, incorporating integral upper body, arm, and hand gestures.

Recognized as a sport by the Sport Council of Scotland, Highland dance encompasses various specific dances, including the Highland Fling, Sword Dance, Seann Triubhas, Reel, Scottish Lilt, and Flora McDonald's Fancy.

Highland dances often have the complication of being recipe dances with optional variations over the actual steps used and how much is to be included. For this reason, we can't always expect the same performance in each Highland dance video even though the name is the same. Sometimes, as in Scottish country dances, you might come across informality regarding the correct name, such as using "Blue Bonnets" instead of "Blue Bonnets Over The Border," for example.

Highland dances and Scottish country dances often share the same name while being entirely different dances. Some examples of this are Blue Bonnets, Flowers Of Edinburgh, Over The Water To Charlie and Yellow-Haired Laddie. These often relate to poems and songs which also share similar titles.

Some Highland dances do derive from traditional social dances. An example is the Highland reel, also known as the foursome reel or strathspey, in which groups of four dancers alternate between solo steps facing one another and a figure-of-eight style with intertwining progressive movement. Even so, in competitions, the Highland reel dancers are judged individually. All but three Highland dances are danced solo and those three dances are variations of each other.

There is a certain amount of cross-over between Scottish Highland dances and Scottish country dances, in that there are Scottish country dances that include Highland elements as well as Highland-style performance dances that use formations otherwise seen in country dances, but these are relatively few. Both types of dancers wear specialized shoes known as ghillies (or pumps).

Scottish country dances often incorporate Highland steps during setting, especially in dances like the Strathspey and Reels. Examples of Scottish country dances using Highland steps include the Reel Of Tulloch, Foursome Reel and The Eightsome Reel.

Scottish country dancing first appears in the historical record in 17th-century England. Scottish country dancing as we know it today has its roots in an 18th-century fusion of (English) country dance formations with Highland music and footwork. It has become the national ballroom dance form of Scotland, partly because "Caledonian Country Dances" became popular in upper-class London society in the decades after the Jacobite rising of 1745. As early as 1724, there was a published collection of Scottish dance tunes by John and William Neal "A collection of the Most celebrated Scotch Tunes".

While energetic, Scottish country dance is less intense than Highland dancing, dancers execute lively movements, skipping and hopping on their toes.

Scottish Country Dance (SCD) is a type of social dance where groups of couples combine social interaction with lively movement patterns. A dance consists of a sequence of figures. These dances are set to musical forms (Jigs, Reels, and Strathspey Reels) which come from the Gaelic tradition of Highland Scotland, as do the steps used in performing the dances. Traditionally a figure corresponds to an eight-bar phrase of music.

Highland dance highlights technical skill and strength, whereas Scottish country dance emphasizes social interaction and lively movements.

While this site mainly focuses on Scottish Country Dancing, some Highland dances have been included for reference because the two styles of dance are closely related.

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