Village Voice > Footnotes
Scottish Dances Pace Holiday Revel, 
Delighting With Their Precision
The Christmas Revels
 
by Eva Yaa Asantewaa
January 14th, 2005 5:28 PM   
The Christmas Revels 
Peter Norton Symphony Space 
Closed  
 
At two and a half hours, New York Revels' winter 
solstice f๊te — devoted, this year, to Scotland's 
artistry — was as overstuffed as a holiday goodies basket. 
Lovely singing and Highland flinging and storytelling 
and mumming stretched late into the day. A piper piped 
and a fiddler fiddled and the audience snaked around. 
On a stage festooned with evergreen, dozens of hearty 
performers offered instrumental pieces, poems, songs, 
and dances that flowed together seamlessly.  A low-key 
gentleness prevailed, but one number — Half Moon Sword's 
performance of the traditional Papa Stour Sword Dance 
of the Shetland Islands — electrified. Ten woman dancers 
presented themselves as soldiers with their long swords 
at the ready. With hilts and tips gripped in their 
fists, they formed a continuously moving chain whose 
increasingly complex rearrangements were rendered with 
the ease of wielding not a weapon but a silver needle 
and silken thread.

Back