Barn Dance on BBC2Folk

Hello everyone,
BBC2 Radio Virtual Session includes an absolutely lovely tune called "Slow Barn Dance". Could someone enlighten me if "barn dance" is a type of Irish/Scottish/any other trad melody?

It’s actually a type of dance which may be made up of a set of tunes which aren’t necessarily named " ——- Barn dance", eg a Canadian Barn Dance usually comprises a selection of hornpipes.

I’m not sure which type of tunes make up Scottish/Irish Barn dance sets—I’m not too acquaint with all the dances. Maybe, because I’ve got two left feet, I started to play music to avoid dancing. 🙂) There are several tunes with Barn Dance in the title which do not all appear to be of the same type, although many are hornpipes..

Of course, a Barn Dance is also the name of a dance or ceilidh held within a barn (obviously)—very popular in rural areas— and some of the tunes might just be a reference to such an occasion rather than a particular type of melody.

John

Thanks, John, for explanation; that satisfies my curiosity.

Over here, there is a ceilidh Barn Dance, as danced in Ireland and Scotland to hornpipes (like the Canadian), and an Old-Tyme Barn Dance danced to Side By Side, Heart Of My Heart etc. (and nothing to do with American Old-Time). We play both at Scottish dances, so they have to be specific which sort of Barn Dance is required.

The Barndance came this sde of the Atlantic about the 1870’s as a tune called "Dancing in the Barn" and presumably had a dance written for it. In Donegal there are two kinds of schottisch danced - the Highland - for the Fling and the German for the Barn Dance.
Bobby McCleod on his CD ‘At the Dancing’ uses ‘The Teddy Bears Picnic’ (a jig) for the Canadian Barndance

-or any of the following: Highland Fling, Highland, Fling, German. I will be adding short dance descriptions in the future. What they all share in common is that hornpipe rhythm, skip. The dances that carry these names had their differences, steps particular to the form - Schottische (at best guess and from earliest sources - Bohemian), the German, the Highland Fling, and the Barndance. Again, as with the rhythm, the basic traveling step is the same, a ‘skip-change’ or hop-1-2-3 or 1-2-3-hop. The ‘Canadian Barndance’ was also danced in Ireland and was also a feature in English ceilidhs and is still to be found in Scotland and sometimes in America. More will come in the future, the coffee’s on…

Discussion – Barndances, Germans, Hornpipes, Highlands, Flings, Highland Flings, Schottisches, etc…

https://thesession.org/discussions/4149/comments