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Step-dancing is a form of percussive dance, danced in hard-soled shoes to music played at a particular tempo on pipes, whistle, fiddle or puirt-a-beul (mouth music). That is, beating ones’ heels, toes and feet in as many ways as possible and imaginable, keeping time with the rhythms of the music in strathspey, reel and jig time.

Until around 1992 step-dancing was rarely seen or danced in Scotland and few people knew about it. It’s discovery partly occurred through the visits and teachings of Cape Breton step dancers, including Harvey Beaton and Mary Janet Macdonald. This style of dancing was kept very much alive in Cape Breton Island, Nova Scotia, Canada by Scottish immigrants who settled there in the late 1700’s.

There are many steps that can be learned passed on through family generations. The style has never been prescribed, except dancing steps neat and close to the floor. Many dancers have their own individual style and steps they like to do to particular tunes.

The traditional form of step dance, which appears to be reasonably close in style to the dancing that was brought by nineteenth-century emigrants from the Highlands and Islands of Scotland, is characterised by a tremendous neatness. The feet remain very close to the floor at all times; not a beat is missed. There are only a relatively small number of short, symmetrical steps, but the foot has an exact position in each. The newer forms show many influences from other styles of dance, such as Irish, tap, Acadian, and Ottawa Valley step dance. Many of the steps are ‘offeat’, that is, they do not fit exactly with a four or eight-bar phrase of music, and they are asymmetrical: what one foot does is not mirrored exactly by the other.