William Sutherland was the only virtuoso Highland dancer to emigrate to New Zealand. James Kinghorn came to New Zealand in 1924. David Bothwell (1895 - 1975), whom I saw competing at Waipu, had a competitive record in Scotland that bears no comparison with Mr Sutherland's. Bertie Robertson, whom I knew, saw dance and competed against once, arrived about 1953. Duncan Stewart MacLennan was another immigrant dancer whose record in Scottish competition should be examined.

 

Duncan S. MacLennan will reappear in this memoir. A review of the dancing MacLennan brothers' careers will be useful for this reason and also because it provides a partial dancing perspective on Mr Sutherland from his own time. 

 

Duncan S. (1863-1934/5) was a brother of William, the third son, and of Donald G. MacLennan who was,  I believe, 96 years old when he died. Donald was born in 1869.  There were nine children, four daughters. I am indebted to Glen McGregor for the dates.

 

William, at least, learned Highland dancing from his uncle, Murdo MacLennan, after the boys' father died. He learned also from John MacNeill Snr and he studied ballet with Enrico Cecchetti, apparently in Paris. William was variously a newspaper reporter and an architect . He lead concert parties that included Scott-Skinner to North America and died of meningitis in Montreal, aged 32 .

 

Donald, the self styled "Professor of Dancing," privately published "Highland and Traditional Scottish Dances" in 1950. Donald spent the nine summers from 1900 studying ballet in London under the Dane Alexander Genee, joining Alexander's niece, ballerina (later Dame) Adeline Genee in lessons. Donald taught the ballerina some Highland dancing.

 

There is no question that the three brothers were very interested in ballet and that they incorporated a good deal of technique from ballet into their Highland dancing. This will later be seen to be of some significance for New Zealand Highland dancing. I will refer to them as the London MacLennans. The adjective, "London" is meaningful which, though it may not be accurate in a geograhical sense, it is in a dancing one.

 

Duncan S. MacLennan was a teacher of several forms of dance, an acute alcoholic (that being a cause of his death in Gisborne in 1935) and a disciplinarian. He would wake his children at night to practise piping and dancing which caused disension in the household. Ultimately he was ejected from his Scots family. He died in Gisborne estranged from them having arrived in New Zealand too late in life to have left a substantial dancing legacy in the less than ten years that he lived here.

 

Nevertheless, MacLennan exerted some influence long after his death on the subsequent course of New Zeland Highland dancing, as we shall see, because Dorothy Parker was among his New Zealand pupils.

 

Mr Sutherland did not rate the brothers very highly and he never mentioned them winning at major competitions in Scotland. William MacLennan was, however, dead before Mr Sutherland started to make a name for himself. This contrasts with other great dancers like Pirie, McNiell and Center who were continual talking points.

 

The immigrant situation in New Zealand dancing can be compared with that in pipe music. There were no immigrant pipers to New New Zealand of a stature comparable to Mr Sutherland's in dancing, but there has always been a flow of very able pipers settling here. Jenny Coleman hasdocumented the arrival of pipers before 1912 in the  H eather and the Fern, though her allegory confuses pipers. Murdo and John MacKenzie along with George Yardley were later arrivals, to be followed by Angus MacCauley. William Cruikshank and Dugald Murdoch are modern ones and there are several others. Murdo MacKenzie's piping record in Scotland is a very good one.

 

Of similar importance, young pipers from New Zealand have been going to Scotland since World War II and staying there several years to learn their art. Latterly, a flow has begun to Canada. This has steadily raised the standard of piping here, attested by a line of successes in Scotland: of the Turrells, the Dodds, the Bains, the Hannings, and of the Wilsons and Hawkes who have returned to disseminate their knowledge in New Zealand. Other successful New Zealand pipers have stayed on to join the Scottish professional circuit or the Army , such as Bruce Hitchings.

 

In addition to these successes there has been an important flow to Scotland of bandsmen  who, good pipers  before they left, have returned here more knowledgeable and capable, like Paul Turner. All of this says much about the high quality of piping tuition availabe in New Zealand, that these pipers were able to build upon in Scotland.

 

The dancing has a different history. The serious issue here is that there has never been a substantial flow of quality dancers between New Zealand and Scotland. There have been isolated exceptions, and there is now a trickle of traffic. This has been comparatively recent and of insufficient magnitude to alter the dimensions of the problem. An explanation of why the dancers did not follw the example of their pipers will be offered later in his memoir. It was not a financial excuse, as has been claimed, because young pipers managed to raise the fares.

 

This raises the matter of the long-run quality both of our dance performers and of New Zealand Highland dancing teachers who, historically, have never had any one knowledgeable to learn from within a system that was closed by the institutions that governed it.

 

Such has been the dilema of the New Zealand Academy of Highland and National Dancing Inc. Good dancers did not come from Scotland to New Zealand before or after the Academy, with one exception, so this source  could not provide the Academy with dancing knowledge. New Zealand dancers did not go to Scotland in any significant number so there was no knowledge available from this source either.

 

The exception was a man who could have put New Zealand Highland dancing on track, just as his pupil, J.L. MacKenzie, did for Canadian dancing. This was William Sutherland originally of Thurso and later from Aberdeen. He was a leading, or the leading, dancer in Scotland from 1900 to 1923 when he came to New Zealand. He taught here from 1923 until 1961. He died in Turakina in 1967.

 

I will tell you a little of William Sutherland in this memoir. It will cover sufficent parts of his competitive record in Scotland and in New Zealand and a little of his dancing technique, both of which have almost been lost.

 

It is important in the tansmission of knowledge to set down those learned from him and those who did not, and the reason why most claims to having been his pupil are trite. His relationship to the New Zealand Highland dancing community has had international ramifications that  are also  recorded here.  Pipers have contributed to the institutional problems of that relationship, the effects of which have endured until today. The present position of New Zealand dancing is analysed and the roles of key people are reviewed,. Photographs of interest are recorded.