venta

This weekend, it was time for the annual slog up to Leyland for the Lancashire Wallopers' weekend of clog-dancing classes. The Wallopers are a long-established clog display team - not that that stopped me from feeling slightly risqué when I googled from work for "wallopers weekend" a week or so ago. (If you care, I didn't find anything particularly interesting. Nor did I find what I was looking for.)

This year, I'd opted to learn Sam Sherry's Schottishe steps, which was listed as an "advanced" routine. (As it turned out, it was more intended as a revision course for people who'd half-forgetten it than as a teaching-new-material course. Oops.)

Sam Sherry, incidentally, was an amazing bloke. He was a musical hall performer - clog dancer and acrobat - in the 20's and 30's. By the time I met him, he was an elderly man who only danced as part of teaching, propping himself up between chairs. However, at the weekend I was chatting to someone who had learnt from him in the late 70s and apparently he thought of nothing of turning backflips round the room when his pupils (40 or 50 years his junior) complained they were tiring. Certainly the black-and-white films of him perfoming in his heyday show a slim, fantastically athletic man, quite able to flip upside down while playing the violin.

In his later years he became famous (well, famous on the folk scene :) for the traditional clog steps he knew. Sam Sherry's Lancashire Hornpipe is the archetypical beginners' routine (which I first learned aged around 7, in a chilly village hall in the Lakes - not from Sam but from Mel, one of his protegés). Practically anyone in the UK who claims to be a clog dancer can blunder their way through the Sam's Lancashire Hornpipe. Blunder might be the operative word - although the steps are simple, they defy one of the basic beginner's rules:

Each clog "step" is actually enough tappity-tappity to fill 8 bars of music. The step itself usually fills 6 bars, and the remaining 2 bars are the "break" (or "finish"). Although the steps vary, the break is the same each time (like a chorus), giving you a chance to pick yourself back up if you've got lost.

But no. Not Sam's routines. Sam was a showman, and an audience doesn't want to see the same thing over and over again. So his "breaks" are always full of unexpected extra bits and fancy twiddles. Which is fine, in the beginners routines. They're simple - the only problem is remembering which one comes where.

And this weekend I was trying to learn something advanced. The steps are complicated, and (unlike beginners' steps) aren't basic repeating patterns, and have random bits of syncopation shoved in just to catch you out. Harry, who was teaching us, was one of Sam's main pupils and was full of comments and instructions as to style. Even at the learning stage, the style gets shoved in with the steps - after all, the aim is to an impress an audience.

After two days' frantic learning, I feel that I currently have all the relevant information balanced in my head. I also feel that if I relax too much or tilt my head even slightly, it'll all fall out. What I need is a number of spare hours. In them, I will make lots of tappity tappity noises to myself, and fill in reams of paper. They will say things like this:

Count	L	R
1	st
and a		lazy
2	st
3	hop	leg round
and		catch behind
a		st (slightly behind)
4	st
a		br forward
5	hop
and		tap
a		step
6 and	sh
a		hop
7		st
a		br forward
8	hop
and a		sh

Move forward 4-7, turn on 8.

(That's the first two bars :)

There is a much more complicated (and, to be fair, much more precise) system of notation evolved many moons ago by the Newcastle Cloggies, but I can't understand it; instead I have to make copious notes alongside the actual mechanics of it. Owing to the infrequency of the occasions, most of my practice is done these days with a book in one hand, reading off the notation as I dance (slowly).

As usual, I have returned from Leyland with the full intention of practising more, and making sure I don't forget what I've just learned. I have dispatched a request to the musician-uncle that he put some appropriate music on a tape for me and fling it south. Expect complaints from the housemates in the near future...

Here endeth the report on things remarkably few people know or care about :)