If you look at the original description for the dance you may wonder about bars 25–32: The ladies are coming out of a right hands across, i.e., they’re moving clockwise, but the promenade at the end of the first part goes
anticlockwise
? This is obviously completely counterintuitive, and therefore one must not wonder that it is generally – see Keith Rose’s diagram – not actually danced that way, except if one is in Edinburgh and Bill Hamilton is present (he is, however, no longer in a position to complain since he shuffled off this mortal coil in 2021). To be fair, it should be mentioned that Bill Hamilton noticed quite quickly that the anticlockwise promenade perhaps wasn’t the greatest of ideas, but he still insisted on the dance as written because he didn’t want to change the published description. – The Society republished the dance in
Thirty Popular Dances, Volume Two
and, as usual, masterfully avoids taking sides in the debate; instead, it leads its readers right into the trap by means of the completely unhelpful explanation, “All four couples dance a promenade round to own places” (which is identical for bars 25–32 and 97–104).
The other place where the published and the popular forms of the dance differ concerns the circle at the very end. Officially, this goes first to the right and then to the left (as a mirror image of the circle at the start of the dance), but it is common to keep going in the same direction (right) throughout the final 8 bars. It may be advisable to seek a consensus before the dance starts in order to avoid struggles, collisions, or dislocated shoulders.
Ian Powrie
Ian Powrie (1923–2011) was born in Bridge of Cally, near Blairgowrie, Perthshire. His father Will played the melodeon for dancing; Ian took up the fiddle at the tender age of 5 and later joined his father’s band. He appeared on a record with them already in 1933. During WWII he served as a pilot and came back to his father’s farm in 1946. In 1949 he reconvened his father’s band and made his first recording the same year (his sister Mary played the piano and his brother Bill the button accordion). At first they only appeared at weekend dances, but from 1951 they were in the recording studio on a regular basis – first for the
Beltane
label in Glasgow, and from 1953 for
Parlophone
. One of Ian Powrie’s most popular records,
Bothy Ballads for the Gay Gordons
, was recorded in 1957 together with George Martin, later on producer for the Beatles (who also started on
Parlophone
).
In 1960, Ian and the band turned “pro” and were closely associated with Andy Stewart and the famous/notorious television show,
The White Heather Club
. After a tour in Australia and New Zealand with Andy Stewart, Ian decided to emigrate to Australia together with his wife Leila and his children. Accordingly, he left the town of Auchterarder in 1966, hence the dance. He continued his musical career in Australia, returned to Scotland in 1984, but then re-emigrated to Australia in 1999 and stayed there until he died in Perth (the Australian one) in 2011.
From “Anselm's Notes on Dances”, by Anselm Lingnau
(Used by permission.)