By Tina Comeau
THE VANGUARD
NovaNewsNow.com
When Katherine Oakley was around 10 years old, she and her family went to the Tattoo in Halifax. She remembers her mom saying to her, wouldn’t it be neat if some day you could be dancing in this?
Oakley remembers thinking yes, that would be cool. But it isn’t likely to happen.
Except that now it is.
Oakley, 16, and her friend Emily Fougere, 18, are both part of a group of 44 youth highland dancers that have been pulled together from Yarmouth to Cape Breton to perform at the Royal Nova Scotia International Tattoo, which takes place July 1-8. The girls are both students of the MacKenzie School of Dance.
This isn’t the first time dancers from this region perform at the Tattoo. La Baie en Joie from Clare performs frequently at the Tattoo and is part of the lineup this year.
And there are also other dancers with ties to Yarmouth – Hayley Pothier and Ashley Comeau, former dancers of the MacKenzie School of Dance – who are part of the group that Oakley and Fougere are dancing with.
Oakley and Fougere explain that they and the other dancers had to audition to be part of this highland choreography group. They have been travelling to Halifax on weekends for 9 a.m. rehearsals to prepare for the show.
The dancing they’ll be doing is a little different than what they’re accustomed too. They’ll be dancing in partners, whereas they’re more used to performing solo.
“So you have to make sure that you know what your partner is doing,” says Fougere.
Also, the highland dance they’ll be performing is a slightly different type then they normally dance.
“There are two types of highland dance and we’re the type that they’re not,” Oakley says. “The dances are the same but the movements are slightly different, just enough to mess with your brain because the other dancers are trained to do it different.”
The highland dance group will be performing with a pipe and drum band. The girls will have to combine their dancing skill with military precision as they dance intermingled with the pipe and drum band, which will be changing its formation from a cross to an anchor.
The girls both say they are looking forward to the experience of being a part of the Tattoo.
“There’s over 2,000 performers in the tattoo, it’s an international stage,” Oakley says. “You meet people from everywhere.”
