Former assembly rooms, New Assembly Close

Image: © kim traynor Taken: 19 May 2009

The New Assembly Hall, built in 1736 to replace the Dancing Academy in nearby Old Assembly Close. The building is now used by solicitors. Major Edward Topham, who visited the town in 1775, has left us this unforgettable description of the native passion for traditional dance. "The Dances of this country are entirely void of grace (...) unless we consider it, as the Savages do, merely as an exercise. The general Dance here is a Reel, which requires that particular sort of step to dance properly, of which none but people of the country can have any idea. All the English whom I have seen attempt it, were very deficient in their imitations; and though the Scotch were too polite openly to laugh at them, they saw and felt the ridicule of grown gentlemen learning to dance. The perseverance which the Scotch Ladies discover in these Reels, is not less surprising, than their attachment to them in preference to all others. They will sit totally unmoved at the most sprightly airs of an English Country Dance; but the moment one of these tunes is played, which is liquid laudanum to my spirits, up they start, animated with new life, and you would imagine they had received an electrical shock, or been bit by a tarantula. A Lady, who, for half an hour before, has sat groaning under the weight of a large hoop and a corpulent habit of body, the instant one of these tunes is applied to her ear, shall bounce off her seat, and frisk and fly about the room to the great satisfaction of all the spectators. (...) A Scotchman comes into an assembly-room as he would into a field of exercise, dances till he is literally tired, possibly without ever looking at his partner, or almost knowing who he dances with. In most countries the men have a partiality for dancing with a woman; but here I have frequently seen four gentlemen perform one of these Reels seemingly with the same pleasure and perseverance as they would have done, had they had the most sprightly girl for a partner. (...) I shall not hesitate to say, the Scotch dance more ungracefully than any other people I have yet seen. (...) It is no civility to attempt to show them any thing new; they hold their dances sacred, and will bear no innovation on that point." "ungracefully"? Judge for yourself https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BPDWsQbX6Bc See also Image and Image

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