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The RSCDS
Content on this site is licensed under a
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These dances may be freely danced, performed, put on dance programmes, so long as the source is acknowledged (Ian Brockbank, unless otherwise specified). If you try any of these dances, please let me know how you get on and what you think of them.
At the moment I am willing to admit to the following dances. I have roughly graded them by difficulty, as follows:
Easy dances, suitable for ceilidhs as well as SCD.
Devised for Sophia Marriage and Jonathan Pryce in honour of their wedding in St Martin of Tours Episcopal Church in Edinburgh on the 6th of July, 2002 and performed at the ensuing celebrations in The Hub. With much love and best wishes for the future.
Sophi and Jonathan both lived in Bruntsfield throughout their courtship, and bought a house together in Bruntsfield as their first marital home.
July 2002
This dance was devised for Hazel Easey and James Williams and presented to them on the occasion of their wedding in Canonbie, Dumfriesshire on August 24th, 1996.
With Caroline Bradshaw, May 1996
Written at the request of Lindsay Weir, to accompany a set of jigs on her CD "Celtic Steps", released in 2005.
June 2005
In April 2007 I was asked to devise a dance to perform at the Festival Interceltique in Lorient in August 2007 (Scotiland being the invited guest nation). I came up with “A Trip to Lorient” which was designed for performance by fit expert dancers. A Trip to Lorient is not for the faint-hearted or for beginners, so this dance is a dance to share with everyone attending the festival, on behalf of Scotland, the invited guests. But then Jim said he wanted a reel which would look good in a 10-second snippet on the 10 o’clock news, so I started work on “Festival Interceltique” instead.
June 2007
Devised for Samantha Lyall and Craig Townsend on the occasion of their Wedding in Edinburgh on April 21st, 2001.
The name comes about as follows: the original tune is "The Black Bear", Craig's favourite tune, and Craig and Samantha live in Portobello. Paddington was also a bear, who frequently visited Portobello Road. Paddington was fond of marmalade sandwiches. Two common brands of marmalade are Golden Shred and Silver Shred - things Samantha often sees in her work as a jeweller.
April 2001
Devised for Cath Millar and Gareth Mathieson for the occasion of their Wedding in Bristol, Sep. 5th 1998. "The Packhorses" played for the evening ceilidh.
August 1998
When my son Stuart was first born, his sister Lorna called him "Oot". This then progressed to "'Ua't" and then "S'ua't". This dance was written just before Stuart’s first birthday, and is dedicated to him.
March 2005
Devised for Cath Millar and Gareth Mattison for the occasion of their Wedding in Bristol, Sep. 5th 1998, with love from Caroline Bradshaw and Ian Brockbank. "The Packhorses" played for the evening ceilidh.
August 1998
This dance was devised for Michael Grimes and Vanessa Williams and presented to them during the barn dance to celebrate their wedding on the 5th of June 2004. They were married in Bourneville Quaker Meeting House, and had the barn dance in Tardebigge.
June 2004
This dance is a more complex variant of “A Quaker Meeting” which involves partner-swapping as well as mixing of couples. I hope Michael and Nessa’s marriage isn’t a mixup, so we didn’t dance this at the wedding...
June 2004
This dance was written when I worked for IndigoVision plc, and was first danced at a company ceilidh in Prestonfield House, Edinburgh, on Saturday 5th May, 2001.
I’m not convinced by the name, so it may change, and the dance may evolve as well...
May 2001
Written for the wedding of Geraldine McIvor and Gordon “Snod” Simpson in Edinburgh on 16th September, 2006. With much love and best wishes for the future together, and first danced at their wedding ceilidh that evening. Snod’s Edge is a village in the North East of England. Gordon is not a particularly experienced dancer, so I was trying to write a dance that wouldn’t be beyond him. I hope I’ve judged the edge of his abilities correctly.
September 2006
Written for my brother, Stephen, for his 21st birthday on the 22nd of June, 2000, and first danced at the ceilidh on the 17th celebrating his birthday. Stephen was born in Botswana, and given the name "Mpho" (meaning "gift") by the local people of the village; he was known by this name for the first few years of his life.
In writing this dance, I tried to come up with something which would be suitable for competent ceilidh dancers as well as enthusiastic SCD dancers.
June 2006
Easy dances, but due to the style probably more suited to SCD programmes than ceilidhs.
This dance was written for Sophia Marriage, then president of New Scotland, when she complained that all dances containing reels of four contained other figures which were too complex for beginners.
October 1996
This dance was written for a New Scotland social following a lesson on double triangles.
December 1993
Devised by Caroline Bradshaw (now Brockbank).
Any resemblance to "The Happy Meeting" (RSCDS book 29) is completely intentional.
28th June 1998
This dance was devised for Diana Fair and Sandy Small and presented to them on the occasion of their Wedding in Birmingham, Oct. 24th 1998. Diana and Sandy met when Diana lived in the flat immediately above Sandy's in a Marchmont tenement.
Dances which shouldn't prove too challenging for a moderately experienced dancer.
This is a dance which was inspired by hearing Iain MacPhail play his "Deil's Conundrum" medley on Take the Floor, recorded in Princes Street Gardens in August 1996 and broadcast in October that year.
Brian Peutherer and Marion Garrett were married in May 1998, and had a super dance in the evening. However, no-one wrote a dance to celebrate. I was shocked. So I wrote this dance for their first anniversary - Brian And Marion's First Anniversary Dance, or the BAMFAD.
Written for Joy Bradshaw, Christmas 1998. In 1998 Mrs Bradshaw was awarded The Broderer's Prize for her services to The Embroiderers' Guild.
This dance was written for Sophia Marriage and presented to her on the occasion of her 30th birthday. "The Gloomy Winter" (see below) was okay, but bars 9-16 just don't really work, so this is a variant which replaces those with something easy and which works better. I think this is a better dance, and more likely to catch on.
Pete Clark auctioned a tune at a charity ceilidh in aid of the Kisoro School for the Blind in May 2001, and I was fortunate enough to be the highest bidder. The tune he wrote was a lively reel, which I named for our cat Maple. The back of a fiddle is made of maple wood, and the bow dances across it during the tune, so there is a pleasing musical tie-in.
I wrote this dance to go with the tune (which I gave to my wife Caroline for her birthday). It is relatively simple, and is my first foray into the world of two-couple dances.
For Brian and Clare East, our role models. Brian suggested the title to me at the New Scotland Annual Ball at the end of January, 1999, and the tune Tam Lin fitted the name, but it took me more than a year to find the steps to go with them.
Not for the faint-hearted - you get 16 bars rest in the whole dance (8 bars every 2nd repeat).
Edinburgh Branch’s annual show of dancing in the Edinburgh Festival Fringe changed producer and venue in 2002, moving to Edinburgh Academy in Hender- son Row, Edinburgh, with Peter Edwards as producer. One of Peter’s key new concepts was to have the show “in the round” with the audience on all sides, and the new venue is well suited to this, having the stage in the centre with the audience all the way round, and also having a balcony.
When the rehearsals for the 2003 show were starting, I was thinking about the previous year and the potential offered by the venue, and this dance took shape.
This dance is dedicated to the dancers and musicians who have performed in the show, and to those whose support has kept everything running smoothly.
Note: this dance is still under development, and may change.
Iain MacPhail played the Alastair Fraser tune "Skye Barbecue" in one of the sets he played for the RSCDS Edinburgh Branch show "Strictly Scottish" in August 2001. I was one of the dancers in the show, and was so taken by the tune that I felt it deserved its own dance. This is the result. It's a lively, showy tune, so it's a lively, showy dance.
For Clare Lyddon and Peter Edwards on the occasion of their wedding on 16th March 2002.
Dances which will take a bit of thought or practice, or possibly careful phrasing.
This dance was based on an idea by Caroline Bradshaw. The 'One O'Clock Gun' can be heard daily at 1pm in Edinburgh, when a gun is fired from the castle. The music 'The One O'Clock Cannon' written by Ian Brockbank in 1994, was written for the cannon (and is published here as well), the dance is a canon.
The name of the tune seemed to fit the dance, conjuring up images of strings of geese meandering aimlessly yet purposefully, all the time lost.
The Mill of Towie is a 19th century oatmeal mill (still in operation as a museum) beside the River Isla in Banffshire. Tune 'The Old Road to Towie' (Speyside Book) or 'Milladen'.
This dance was written for Sophia Marriage and presented to her on the occasion of her 25th birthday. The tune is a gorgeous tune, and the title seemed to fit what she was going through at the time.
This dance was written after a holiday in Torridon, on the West Coast of Scotland, where we managed to lock ourselves out of our car and would have been lost if Dougie, the Fireman of Gairloch had not broken into our car for us.
This dance was written to celebrate the 50th Anniversary of New Scotland, and was first performed as part of a medley of dances at the Inter-Varsity Folk Dance Festival in Cambridge in 1997. Its public debut was at the "50th Anniversary" Ball in The Assembly Rooms on the 3rd of May, 1997.
Dances which are challenging and probably not suited for social dancing, but might prove an interesting challenge for a group of experienced dancers with an hour or two to fill.
This dance was devised as part of a demonstration containing dances which are roughly palindromic (the same backwards as forwards). I decided to see whether I could write a dance which was completely palindromic, and this was the result.
Xakanaxa (pronounced Kakanaka unless you can do the Bushman clicks repesented by the 'x's) is a camp in the Moremi game reserve in the Okovango delta in Botswana. I had trouble sleeping on the plane on the way out to Botswana, so I devised this dance to pass the time. I had some sleepless nights in Xakanaxa camp as well, but I was too busy watching the elephants and hyaenas which woke us up to write any more dances.
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Last modified 31-03-04
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