Australian Heritage Dance

Australian Heritage Dance by Peter Ellis

Heritage Dance is that of a particular country in which their traditions are something they cherish and wish to hold onto. In many cases the origins of the dances are not known and have evolved by the folk process from the time of antiquity. Thus in Europe for example there are numerous folk dances which are social, sometimes shared between countries of related race or neighbourhood, e.g. the respective Germanic, Scandinavian or Slavic countries. Other countries particularly from the other continents did not have social or recreational dance, but ritualistic and ceremonial dance relating to harvest, hunting, war, religion, fertility, love and marriage. These too occur in ancient European traditions of pagan origin. Australian Indigenous people have the Corroboree and a wonderful tradition of ritual and ceremonial dance

Some of the folk dances become the National dance of a country, for example you could regard the Viennese Waltz as the National Dance of Austria. The Reel is that of Scotland and even although the Eightsome Reel is of more recent development it is could be regarded as a Scottish National Dance. Other social dances have been taken either from folk dances and 'dressed up' for the ballroom or have been invented (choreographed) for the ballroom. Many of the key nineteenth century ballroom dances were based on folk or national dances of various European countries. Even the early twentieth century ballroom dances such as the One Step, Tango and Foxtrot or even a solo dance like the Charleston were based on folk dance phases with steps from the African Americans or the Latin Americans.

Whilst Scotland has its Reel and Strathspey as true folk or national dance many of the Scottish Country Dances programmed today are contemporary or have been arranged by dancing masters over the last three centuries. These are regarded as the Ballroom Dances of Scotland. All of these things can be regarded as the Heritage Dance of the particular country in question.

Ireland has its jig and stepdance and many of their other social dances are of more recent development following moves by the Gaelic League of the early 20th C introducing newly arranged dances to create an ‘Irish Ireland’. Dances like Siege of Ennis, Waves of Tory and Walls of Limerick were part of the invention of the turn of the century into the early 1900s and portrayed as folk dance following a ‘cleansing’ and cover up by the new Gaelic League in its attempt to create this Irish Ireland; these dances did not exist and could not have been transported to Colonial Australia during the major period of Irish immigration before and after the potato famine of the 1840s. The dances of this early period were the jig, stepdance and three and four hand reels. Nevertheless the newer dances have now run the course of time and are so popular at every social and céilí to be regarded as the main heritage dances in Irish culture, and rightly so.

Australia is barely old enough to have developed true folk dance but a large proportion are dances that are older than those which emerged in Ireland as a result of commission by the Gaelic League or in comparison with the arranged Scottish country dances also from the hand of the dancing masters.

Almost all social dances in Australia are linked or derived to those popular in the English ballroom at a given point of time. However there is no evidence of English folk dance such as Sellenger's Round, Gathering Peasecods or Northumbrian traditions for example being transported out here with the early settlers. In fact English folk dance is more a revival from the early 20th Century following collections by the likes of Cecil Sharp. However step-dance and clogging was transported here from the beginning of white settlement and prominent in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries as solo items at balls, dances and concerts and for ‘challenge matches’. Whilst these are of folk origin, they are positioned in a grey zone between social and display.

Although the English Country Dance may have originally had folk dance connections from the Village Green there was also a merger during adaptation to the ballroom with the Italian Balleti that Elizabeth 1 favoured over the fashionable French dances of the period. The pattern was set and from the time of Playford through to the Regency the country dances were mainly invented by dancing masters for the landed gentry and eventually the triple minor form for as many as will predominated. There were hundreds of dances that came and went over that period of time and perhaps some consolidated with common or similar figures, but often under different tune names from district to district. Little is known of what the lay folk really danced, but obviously some interchange or influence might occur when a servant was enlisted to make up numbers. The dances of the late 18th century and early 19th century were the first ‘Country Dance’ dances brought out to Australia and only the Scottish Foursome Reel and Strathspey, the Irish Jig and Step-dance are the ones that could be said to be of Celtic origin and definitely folk dances.

In the main most Celtic dances were first introduced by the ‘bush dance’ movement of the 1960s and 70s from British and Irish revivals of the period and had never occurred in the bush and urban areas in the Colonial period. The very early country dances, reels and so on from 1788 onwards can now be clearly resourced via the digitised newspaper accounts online (commencing from 1803) from the National Library of Australia. I have documented these in a series of articles in Trad & Now.

Again there is little evidence of any English village dances performed out here in the early period and most likely it is a class versus convict thing, the free settlers and society dancing the Country Dances and Scotch Reel of the Regency period. Writers seldom reported the activities ‘below their station’. Many of the early dances were gradually extinguished by the end of the Regency following the arrival of the new ballroom dances via England from Europe via France. These ballroom dances, originally European folk dances were the Waltz, Galop, Polka, Mazurka and Polka Mazurka, Schottische and Highland Schottische and the quadrilles of which The Quadrille (First Set) and the Lancers were the principal sets followed later by things like Caledonians, Alberts, Waltz Cotillion and some Australian combination of figures such as Fitzroy Quadrilles and Exions Quadrille, later in the century. Western Australia has many more of these arranged ‘club sets’.

Of course some country dances did survive in less formal circumstances well into the 19th century. Australia differed as a frontier country with the population eagerly waiting at the wharves for news of the latest dance fashions from home and so it was the ball-room dances of the day that predominated and gradually mutated by a folk process over time. The Quadrille, Waltz, Galop, Polka, Mazurka etc were all here within months of any debut in the home country and they spread like wildfire.

With the surviving of some of these later as old dances there had been a folk style process that had come into action. The Lancers for example as a ballroom dance of the nineteenth century was performed with military precision, elegance and grace. By the twentieth century at least in rural areas it had become a very vigorous dance with lively swinging replacing the old 'set and turn partners' and the new basket figure in which sometimes the women lifted off the ground 'merry go round' fashion was popular. Later this became dangerous and the Lancers by the 1950s had been banned in many city ballrooms, but it survived longer in the bush. Also in some country districts such as rural NSW and Qld as well as in the Apple Sheds of Tasmania it became one large community set with equal and opposite numbers of couples around the four sides of the walls. The Bellbrook Lancers is the classic example of this (the Alberts another) and as with many other 'collected' dances deriving from the late Colonial period they had not only become folk style, but could be regarded as the folk dances of Australia.

I see Heritage Dance in the context of this country's heritage and whilst it can include other heritages, these in my view need to percolate out into mainstream Australian culture – which can be known in a district, not necessarily nationwide – and be considered part of Australian heritage. Several dances now known only at Nariel (near Corryong NE Victoria) fall into this category. Examples include the Manchester Galop and Uncle Ev’s Barn Dance whilst in similar German settled areas of Queensland near Toowoomba, the Berlin Schottische and Herr Schmidt are further examples of popular social dance in the broader community.

Of course every cultural group in Australia has its own national heritage which is upheld in various clubs and gatherings and sometimes even becoming ‘greater than thou’ from the homeland. But this is their heritage not ours – and this is not to say we shouldn’t be interested in it or support it within the contemporary multicultural tapestry of broader Australian culture.

To clarify I would regard the very early Scottish dances performed out here as part of our heritage, because at that time, it was broadly performed by everybody. I'm referring to the Scotch Reel or Foursome in particular which included a Strathspey component. But I would not regard the dances performed by the contemporary Scottish Country Dance groups as Australian Heritage, it is Scottish Heritage. There are grey areas of course. The Eightsome Reel I regard as within our Heritage because there's enough evidence of it being danced outside the club circle. Caledonian groups, I ponder more closely about because these weren’t so selective or were more socially interactive as many from outside the Scottish club scene once went to those functions.

If you have a dance that has been taken up say in the Bush Dance Revival from the 1970s, then that has become part of our historical heritage just by the very numbers the ‘bush bands’ that performed influencing mainstream dancing. Apart from the Dashing White Sergeant, Waves of Tory and new Highland Reel as examples of repertoire, other things like Swedish Masquerade and even the Russian Troika were introduced.

The several Germanic dances at Nariel and districts near Toowoomba I would regard as our heritage because they've percolated out into the general repertoire of the district people. But if the Ländler is performed by the local members of the German Club or ‘Deutscher Verein’ it is not our heritage, it is theirs. Enormous valuable collections of music have been gathered from the Maltese in Melbourne, but this remains within their enclave, it hasn't moved out as far as I know. In contrast Swiss Italian tunes from the families settled between Castlemaine and Ballarat from the 1850s have become our heritage because the tunes quickly moved out into the repertoire of the general district musicians because of open social gatherings and interaction in those districts. Tom Walsh of Irish background at Trentham, Jack Heagney (now at Portarlington) and the late Harry McQueen and Dave Barkla of Castlemaine had all picked these tunes up by ear and have handed them on.

Cultural items such as ethnic food and recipes move even more quickly through mainstream adoption and adaptation.

There are many dance groups in Australia that organise programmes under the title of Heritage or Colonial Dance, yet a large proportion of those dances are neither Heritage nor Colonial. Many are newly arranged dances entered in competitions by prominent dancers or teachers in competitions, there’s nothing wrong with that, but they cannot be Colonial or folk and must run a period of time and acceptance in social dance in the general community and be ‘well thought of’ before they can be accepted as Heritage.

Strictly speaking Colonial dance in Australia is the social dance of the period from settlement in 1788 to Federation January 1901. Some groups extend the era by a decade or so to allow for the inclusion of the Edwardian ‘Old Time’ couple dances, but this is really a very different and new form compared to that of Victorian times. Heritage allows the flexibility to not be restricted so much by political or century bounded eras and to include those dances that were widely taken up and cherished in the public arena.

Dance organisations wanting to base their involvement more on the new dances and those from other traditions should think very carefully about the name of their organisation and what it aims to portray and profile.

In the last few years I’ve gone to great lengths in the documentation of first hand references from various sources - but in particular from the digitised newspaper accounts from the National Library of Australia. These have been presented in a series of articles in Trad & Now and the eras covered are the dances of the first days of settlement in Australia, basically the English Country Dances of the Regency Period, followed by the balance of the Colonial Dances through to 1901. The next series covered the Old Time Dance era from initial origin in the Edwardian period of the early 1900s, the modern ballroom dance of the 1910s and 20s and the enormous revival of Old Time dance in the 1920s and 30s. This then was followed by the development of New Vogue dance at the close of the period. The concluding series is on the history of the Bush Band and Bush Dance that developed in the 1960s and 70s. All of these resources from public accounts make it quite clear as to what is Colonial, Heritage, Old Time, Bush etc. Check the dances that were popular against those that many dance organisers now attempt to pass off under those titles.

Peter Ellis May 2011, updated April 2013