Saturday evening is the night of the big dance in the Clickimin Leisure Centre with 700 dancers and no less than 12 dance bands, 6 from Shetland and the 6 visiting bands. Craigellachie was certainly in esteemed company; Ian Muir of Prestwick and David Cunningham are well known to dancers in this area, Marion Anderson is a well known recording band and a couple of bands I haven’t heard before, The Orwell Band and Steven Carcary, made up the visiting bands. The local bands were Cullivoe, Da Fustra, Jim Halcrow, Leeshinat, Jimmy Burgess and James Leask. Each band plays 2 or 3 dances and the atmosphere in the hall is “fair jumping”. The floor heaves with people and the music is augmented by cheers and whoops throughout. The dance doesn’t finish until well after 2am and the floor is as packed at the end as it is at the beginning.

A note about the dancing in Shetland. More akin to ceilidh dancing it has a style all of its own. Encores are nearly always obligatory, a second encore common. The same dances appear regularly throughout the evening with the Boston 2-Step and St Bernard’s Waltz being the most popular. Each dance is slightly different from the way we have learnt them. The Boston 2-Step for example has no turning the lady under the arm, the “bounce and kick” movement is completed with all the ladies and all the men holding hands in a ring with everyone giving a loud Wheesh! Dances are danced at the usual ceilidh speed which is a lot faster than the RSCDS speed that we are more used to down south. Two dances that we rarely see down south are the Quadrilles and the Lancers. A word of warning here - we were persuaded to join a set for the Lancers, which is danced in half-a-dozen sections and takes about 25 minutes to complete. We were on our knees at the end of it so intense and fast was the birling. One section has the basket as its main movement and the speeds we reached were terrifying. Not even a season of Summer Tuesdays prepared us for that!

Sunday started with a final formal concert at the Garrison theatre, which features six acts selected from the Thursday and Friday concerts. So many tickets were sold that it was repeated at the Islesburgh centre with the two halves reversed. Our band was honoured to be invited to close the concert at the Garrison so we started at the Islesburgh listening to the two other acts in our half, Irish accordionist Seamus O’Sullivan leading a band of Shetland musicians and three times former National Fiddle Champion Alistair McCulloch.

Playing a concert spot at the Islesburgh was certainly a daunting prospect. As a dance band we are used to seeing plenty of movement when we play but to see 200 people concentrating on every nuance of our sound is a very foreign experience for us. It was all worthwhile though as the band was very well received and we hastily packed our instruments away and into a van for the short drive to the Garrison where we set up again and awaited our turn. Playing in the Garrison was much easier as we were on a brightly lit stage and the audience was totally in the dark! Once again a very exciting experience and the comperes at both venues spoke in glowing terms of the whole event.

Sunday evening for us was ‘The Final Fling’ at the Islesburgh, an informal party and dance for musicians and their Shetland hosts. This is by way of a thankyou to the Shetlanders for providing accomodation for the visiting musicians. Without the pressure of performing it was nice to relax, enjoy the music and dancing, chat to the other bands and swap stories of an amazing weekend. Dancers joined us after midnight and the festival closed with another informal dance session to a procession of bands. Knowing we didn’t have to play the next day meant the party went on even longer than usual.

Monday arrived. A bleary-eyed party assembled at Sumburgh airport for the journey home, thankfully without the delays of our outward journey. Now we’ve swapped the clear blue skies and crisp sunshine of Lerwick for a damp and grey London. The music of the past 4 days is still echoing in our heads and when we shut our eyes, the buses and taxis of the West End are replaced by musicians and dancers whooping it up in the Islesburgh. The sense of displacement is quite overwhelming and returning to a normal existence takes many days. The festival may not be for everybody but, if you delight in listening, and dancing, to accordions and fiddles played superbly in a wide variety of styles and traditions then it is something not to be missed.

Graham and Caroline Hamilton

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