Dancing to the piper's tune

Jessie McCready is one woman who
knows what men wear under their kilts.

Although her days are spent answering
questions at the main switchboard her first love
is performing and teaching the country dances
of her native Scotland.

While most people think of Scottish
dancing as the highland fling, Jessie says the
formations of Scottish country dancing
resemble square dancing. But these traditional
dances are more stylized — many are based on
the original medieval choreography — and the
footwork is elaborate and complicated.

“Tt’s the ballroom dancing of Scotland
— if it’s out of place in a ballroom it shouldn’t
be done in country dancing,” Jessie
says. “This was the dance of the nobility.”

Although Jessie grew up with country
dancing — it’s taught as part of the P.E.
program in Scotland — she didn’t take it up
seriously until after she came to Canada in
1968. She and husband Hugh were looking for
a family hobby, when they discovered a

recreational dancing course taught at the
Dunbar community centre. Dancing seemed to
be a nice complement to the folk singing they
already did, and it was something their two
children — Janice, 26, and Stuart, 21, — could
also learn.

Two years later both Jessie and Hugh
took teacher’s certificates through the Royal
Scottish Country Dance Society (RSCDS), an
international body that sets the dancers’
standards.

The McCreadys perform with the
Vancouver demonstration team: a group of
dancers dressed in full regalia with the women
in white dresses and tartan sashes and the men
in kilts, black “Prince Charlie” jackets and white
shirts with jabots. The group appears for
Scottish celebrations like Robbie Burns Day and
performs with pipe bands — Jessie will be
performing with the Delta Pipe Band in April.

And on April 23 a festival of arts and
crafts at SFU will feature Scottish country
dancers attempting to make the Guiness World
Book of Records with a 256-som — an
elaborate reel involving 256 dancers.

Her skill with complicated choreography
is useful on the job: Jessie is fast at routing