Student Bloggers
Ceilidh and Cathedral
Date
February 6, 2017
This past Friday, I went to a school-sponsored dance. It was less the type of dance that we might be used to; it was advertised as a type of traditional Scottish dancing event called a Ceilidh (pronounced KAY-LEE).
On arrival, I paid the entrance fee to the club officer at the door to the gym and got my hand stamped. After walking through the doors, the first thing I saw was the refreshments table. Rather than being stocked with a large variety of sodas, it had only one drink: Whisky. As more people arrived, we all took a plastic cup and started talking.
The second thing I noticed when I walked in was the live band which was setting up, as opposed to the DJ that usually comes for Arcadia dances. After a few minutes of talking, the third big difference opened up: a food table serving potatoes and haggis. The whole room formed a huge line to get a paper plate and plastic silverware.
My only complaint about the food was that we needed some kind of chaser for the whisky. The whisky by itself was good, the haggis by itself was wonderful, but when you combined the tongue-burning sensation of the whisky with the mild spiciness of the haggis, it felt like breathing fire. In hindsight, I suppose that might have been the purpose behind putting two varieties of potato on one plate.
We sat in groups near the walls of the gym and chatted while we ate and listened to the band strum out a few traditional Scottish folk tunes. After nearly everyone was done eating, the singer spoke: “Who’s ready to dance?” Nearly all the people put down their plates and cups and marched onto the floor. I followed them.
“Now, I want everyone to form groups of three, and then each group of three find one other group of three.” I don’t know what I was expecting, except that I was expecting some kind of partner dance. I confusedly found 5 people who had varying degrees of confused expression, and we (attempted to) follow instructions. Over the course of the next 5 minutes, I would discover the hidden purpose behind Scottish line dancing: to make the drunk people get dizzy and fall over as many times as possible before the end of the night. I’m pleased to say that my behind did not once touch the floor unintentionally.