Music to dance to: 3

The Great Teddy Bear Hunt – a fugue

Inspired by the teddy bears in the windows during the COVID-19 lockdown and whilst out cycling, I dreamed up a new jig called The Great Teddy Bear Hunt.

It is a fugue which is based on variations of a repeating formation. Examples of this include e.g. The Cranberry Tart (video here) though the fugal movement is only in the first half of the dance.

This should not be confused with a canon, in which every couple has the same pattern. The One O’Clock Canon is an example of this. Video here.

The first fugues I met were those by Hugh Foss, an amazing devisor who was both a musician and a mathematician. He was a codebreaker in the 2nd world war, at Bletchley Park and is a main player in the breaking of the Japanese enigma-type code. He organised Scottish Country Dancing at Bletchley Park during the war, and right up until the last few years they had a ‘Hugh Foss day of dances’ there annually.

Rob Roy is one of my favourite dances (as with John  Homes) and we have done this at club as a last dance, with various levels of success. Can you work out what is the theme of this fugue?

Dances we typically do by Foss include Fugal Fergus (video here), John McAlpine (video here) and Polharrow Burn (video here) all of which we have done in club, and not just as last dances.

Foss invented the standard 5 couple dance method of having the 1 and 3 couples starting and 1C progressing to 3rd place, and 3C to the bottom. (This can also be done with 2n+1 couples, such as with 7 couples, by the way with the right dance. I once had a group of young dancers dancing Tomalena who did this as a 7C demonstration.) Video of the 5-couple version here.

The first fugue in the society dances is probably a very old dance out of Book 15 called Lochiel’s Awa to France. (Anyone know the historical reference? It is kind of famous.) I once taught this at a summer school for new dancers. I am not sure the musicians (Lynne Scott and John Smith) liked it too much as it is an 8 by 48 Strathspey, so takes over 10 minutes to dance.

The first canon I am aware of was by John Mitchell, a computer scientist, who wrote a very large number of dances (829) some of which were very good such as Caddam Wood (video here), some of which are nearly impossible, such as Cock up your Beaver and some of which play with your head such as Wallace’s Revolution which rotates each time through.

During my time dancing with the Heidelberg Scottish Country Dance group, I was talking to member Allison Mitchell (John’s daughter), who is attempting to check all the dances for danceability and re-publish. She said that the later ones were never danced with people. The Dundee City Police Jig (video here) is likely the first canon. 

Rod Downey
7 April 2020

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