Centenaries have a deplorable habit of making us wait another hundred years for the next one to roll along, so to make the most of the first centenary of the RSCDS the whole Committee has been involved in putting together a programme to show how Scottish Country Dance has evolved since 1923, not only by selecting dances to include new works alongside discoveries culled from centuries-old manuscripts, but also by presenting an inspirational selection of music from the masters of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries to the present day.  So `General Stuart’s Reel’ from Bremner’s Collection of 1768, `Machine without Horses’ of 1772 and William Boag’s `Up in the Air’ of 1797, of an age when balloons and sedan chairs were the height of extravagant fashion, take their places alongside twentieth-century celebrations of our foundresses in `Miss Milligan’s Strathspey’ and the reel `Mrs. Stewart of Fasnacloich’. 

Chris Dewhurst and his band will be playing for us, and Chris has kindly agreed to take a few moments from time to time to give honourable mention to some of those to whom music has always meant more than tadpoles on telegraph wires, the supply of a beat for the feet or even a way of earning a modest living, from the earliest days of the `dancies’ with their fiddles to the international company of composers of today.

We all look forward to seeing you on the dance floor at Lowdham on 18th!

David