The version that you are reading is an expansion of the first edition of this memoir that was published in book form. The book was widely distributed in New Zealand and internationally. It was posted to all Academy judges and teachers. No error of fact or of the analysis in it has been reported. The Academy referred to is the New Zealand Academy of Highland and National Dancing Inc.
There were three mistakes in a previous website version. I am grateful to Donald P Sargent, to Judy Clarke and to Donna J. Ostrander, Canada, for their corrections to the website record and to Carol Dyer who furnished good stylistic advice on both editions.
The second edition, on this website, attracted just over 30,000 visits in its first year to 31 May 2007. Since then the website has averaged about 2,400 hits per month but there were 4,694 visits in August 2008. I cannot fathom the reasons for this spike in the number of hits.
This is the third, and further enlarged, edition of the memoir, the second suffering a hacker's attack in July 2008. Further photos have yet to be replaced after the attack. People interested in the material may wish to make print copies of it in case there is another attack.
Very little reaction has come to me from Academy people though I am told that the hierachy is discomfited by the history that the memoir offers as an alternative to their version of the past.
Annetta Cowie, a member of the Council of the Piping and Dancing Association and Vice President of its Otago Branch, has written in effect that I am dishonest in Scotchpotch 2005, the magazine of the Otago Branch. She has written also there that history should be used constructively. This is a misunderstanding of the purpose of historical study. Recall how the Academy has treated history in its Whig reconstruction of it.
Opponents of the Scottish Official Board of Highland Dancing have written to me in support of the Academy. One theme that they develop is that the SOBHD is dogmatic and autocratic. If this is the case then it is like the Academy, so it is inverted reasoning to support an Academy having the characterisitics that they object to.
Another theme among some correspondents is that one style of dancing is as legitmate as any other so that the styles of the SOBHD and the Academy are equally worthy. The Academy, they propose, should be allowed to co-exist with the Board on an equal footing.
The argument for co-existence is from a period which recognizes fewer standards than previously in cultural activities generally. The coexistence viewpoint applies a diminished set of artistic standards in the comparison of styles to arrive at its conclusion.
Observing art is itself a creative act on the part of the observer. The deeper is the background of the observer in an art the greater is the level of aesthetic appreciation. One accepts the democratic notion that every person may advance an opinion. All the same, some opinions are better based than others, particularly where aesthetics are involved, in this case a comparison of styles. This has been a part of the problem with the Piping and Dancing Association and the Academy.
An opinion that is to be valued does not emerge from a void and we have shown that the Academy has always lacked dancing substance. From this position, the opinion that the Academy and the SOBHD are of equal merit rests upon the application of the shallow and shrunken set of standards of comparison of the present period.
It has been claimed in correspondence by the SOBHD's opponents that Highland dancing is different in Scotland today from the way that Mr Sutherland danced. There is truth to this claim as a reading of the Chapter " Teaching and Technique" will confirm. One response would be to retrieve and preserve those techniques but how many know them to teach them?
Today's good dancers could experiment with written versions of Mr Sutherland's technique and extend the modern repetoire. To do so, they will first have to confront the timing of the dances as we have set them out. That will alter the way that they dance other movements. Much more could be written of his technique.
Many former Highland dancers have responded to the Memoir by telling me their dancing stories. Generally the stories have been tales of Academy intolerance, of persecution and of personal disappointment in stopping dancing rather than accepting Academy control. Some of these people are old now. Some of them before their disaffection were members of the Technical Committee of the Academy where they tried to align the Academy with the Scottish Official Board of Highland Dancing, following in a way in the path of Hilary Glasgow and Neil MacPhee from so long ago and with a like lack of success.
A smaller group of correspondents tell of their epiphany in watching Highland dancing in Scotland. This was their road to Damascus in realizing the shortcomings of Academy dancing. Sometimes for the sake of grandchildren they have joined Scotdance New Zealand, the New Zealand branch of the Scottish Official Board of Highland Dancing.
The Scotdance NZ group has foresworn competing in the New Zealand Academy competitions, that they are excluded from anyway, and they are establishing their own dancing competitions here. One of Scotdance's objectives is for its New Zealand adherents to compete overseas, particulary in Scotland.
Some Scotdance New Zealand dancers are finally following their pipers to Scotland where they are free to compete. Dancers failure to do so was the starting point of this memoir. Morgan Bamford, a Scotdance NZ dancer, has won age group world championships in Scotland. Some Scotdancers compete regularly in Australia. There have been other Scotdance New Zealand dancers competing in Scotland and elswhere.
Scotdance New Zealand is a small, outward looking organization having close relationships with similar organizations in Canada, Scotland and the USA. It is administered by Judy Clarke, teacher of Morgan Bamfield. Members of Scotdance New Zealand are international adjudicators and examiners.
The two leading sports meeting in New Zealand, Turakina and Waipu, now conduct competitions for Scottish Offical Board dancers alongside but seperate from Academy competitions. There was a struggle to bring this about. The Turakina people were subjected to personal abuse while putting their case in a series of meetings with the Piping and Dancing Association. (I have been told that the atmosphere at regional meetings of the Academy can be vitriolic and unpleasant, a culture long ago laid down by Ian Cameron). In 2008 there were a few more Scotdance New Zealand competitors than there were Academy dancers at Turakina.
Turakina wanted to run Scottish Official Board competitions because there is a strong group of Scotdance dancers in nearby Marton. This group is taught by Heather Calkin, daughter of Ruth Macdowall who learned from Mr Sutherland with me in the Taranaki and Wellington Central Police Stations.
In contrast to the international orientation of Scotdance NZ, the access of Academy dancers to international competition is severely restricted. At root this is because they and their organizaton believe as true the apocryphal story of New Zealand Highland dancing that the founders of the Academy created. That falsehood traps them into thinking that Academy dancing has a special status.
When members are freed of this misconception the Academy will be able to adjust its postition. Instead of using quasi legal tactics to argue about autonomy and preservation, it will then be able to deal effectively with the Scottish Official Board of Highland Dancing. Academy members will then join the international fraternity of Highland dancers.
I made none of the changes to my dancing that were promulgated by the Academy, except for the start to the Reels which perforce I had to make if I was to dance them at all and which were not that serious. Competing became a game for me which I knew the rules would not allow me to win. Crowds used to converge to the boards for my performances so I may have been an interesting dancer.
What happened to me? I married Dr Valda Hilary Donald-McCann Senior Lecturer in Pysics at the University of Canterbury and later Manager of the Marsden Fund, the Government's fund for pure research. Mr Sutherland attended our wedding. We did our graduate study at the University of Chicago and I taught for many years at the University of Canterbury where I was Head of Economics. I became Principal Economist of the Inland Revenue Department, a post from which I retired to play pipes poorly and to sail our keeler judiciously.
Mother checked the early drafts of this memoir for accuracy. The first draft dated 15 February 1995, contained a shameful error. A few copies of it were circulated, including copies to Grace Glasgow, Frank McKinnon, Ian McKay, Emma Brown, Tony Stevens-Graham, Peter Dyer and Terence McKelvey.
We have gone back to the Scotland of perhaps 150 years ago to John McNeill Snr. in this manuscript of my lineage. I still have William Sutherland of Thurso and Aberdeen's dancing shoes, the pair shown below that he is wearing or holding in the photographs.
Mr Sutherland has been vindicated by the Scottish ban on New Zealand dancers, cold comfort that he was never to know. This showed the Academy system to mock Highland dancing. The Academy closed Mr Sutherland out of an art form in which he was a great performer and a marvellous teacher. It disgusted him and it persecuted him by its perversion of of his art. Only the McCann, the Glasgow and Croxford families paid him homage in the isolation of his last 15 years. Mother attended his funeral service in Turakina in 1967. His ashes lie at Rose D19 in the Aramoho Cemetry.
He remains the Academy's antinomy.