Dancers take the floor at a ball at Glasgow’s Assembly Rooms.

The Dos and Don’ts of a Highland Ball

Scotland’s centuries-old ball circuit comes with a strict set of rules: learn the reels, never hire a kilt, and whatever you do, don’t take a picture

By Katherine Pangonis

Somewhere in the middle of a foursome reel at the Northern Meeting in Inverness, the music quickens and all of a sudden I am lifted off the ground and spun round at speed by two sweating, kilted Scotsmen. Opposite me, another girl is likewise clinging on for dear life. The dance move is called “the helicopter,” and we women are the blades. It is perhaps the trickiest of the “reels” that are danced at balls across the Highlands, and it is not for the fainthearted.

The good news is that nobody is filming. Not the laird’s son currently spinning his partner with the centrifugal force of a fairground ride, nor the countess keeping impeccable time at the edge of the set, nor the girl in the white dress and clan sash who has been hurled so enthusiastically from one partner to another that one shoe has glanced off the roof. The bagpipes are skirling, the accordion swelling, and 200 people are executing dances of genuine technical difficulty, all in white-tie, tartan, and, crucially, flat shoes.