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Issue 2373: Mary Isdale MacNab

Object
Mary Isdale MacNab (Person)
Submitter
Stephen Webb (SJW)
Assigned to
Anselm Lingnau
Priority
Normal
Disposition
Ignored
Description

Please add

Collector of Dances

to areas of Activity. I have extensively researched Mrs MacNab’s contribution to Scottish Dancing and in all the dances attributed to her none were devised by her. Yes, she collected them from others and often filled in missing bits because she initially recorded them in note form noting what she saw being danced or was told. But devising dances, no. She did create spectaculars for Festivals which involved joining dances together and creating patterns such as The Brooch of Lorne. See my comments on Jean Milligan on the contribution that ‘Collecting’ played in the development of SCD. Many thanks

Previous Actions

  • Date  March 14, 2021, 10:03 a.m.
  • User  Stephen Webb (SJW)

New issue submitted

  • Date  March 14, 2021, 11:27 a.m.
  • User  Murrough Landon (murrough)

Disposition changed to »Needs help« (previously »New«)

Same suggestion as issue 2372 (https://my.strathspey.org/dd/issue/2372/) so I suggest discussion is kept in that issue and eventual action is copied here later.

  • Date  Dec. 22, 2022, 5:01 p.m.
  • User  Viktor Lehmann (tone2tone)

Assigned changed to »tone2tone« (previously »None«)

NB as we HAVE one dance credited to her as a deviser, this area of activity has to stay, unless someone gives proof that she didn’t devise that dance. As mentioned in issue 2372, we have no category “collector of dances”, and I find it unlikely that a version in the near future will hold such a category.

  • Date  Dec. 22, 2022, 5:31 p.m.
  • User  Anselm Lingnau (anselm)

Assigned changed to »anselm« (previously »tone2tone«)
Disposition changed to »Ignored« (previously »Needs help«)

The “areas of activity” are set automatically from other information in the database:

  • If you’re listed as a deviser in any dance entry, that makes you a “deviser of dances”.
  • If you’re listed as a publisher in any publication entry, that makes you a “publisher”.
  • If you’re listed as an artist in any recording entry, that makes you a “musician”.
  • If you’re listed as a composer in any tune entry, that makes you a “composer”.

The database does not track who “collected” a dance, and the total number of “collected” dances as a percentage of the overall repertoire (most of which has been written by known entities, with a minority of dances reconstructed from old sources) isn’t big enough to warrant adding that relationship to the data model explicitly – only a small number of individuals actually qualify as “collectors”. As has been mentioned very often, in the case of Mrs MacNab, chances are that she actually made up most if not all of the “MacNab dances” herself and faked their (unverifiable) backstories for “street cred”. (The main argument for that is that if the type of performance dance exemplified by the “MacNab dances” had been endemic in the 18th century Scottish dance repertoire, there would be contemporary written records and/or other oral sources than the mythical correspondents who gave the dances only to Mrs MacNab. Since we don’t have anything of the sort, Occam’s Razor suggests that the most likely explanation is that she herself invented these dances for her performance groups and added fancy stories to them to make them seem more authentic. In that scenario they’re essentially SCD’s equivalent to Ossian or the Book of Mormon.)

Mrs MacNab is a dance deviser on account of the single dance that we have which was demonstrably written by her, and the database does not, and is unlikely to in the future, recognise “collector” as an official area of activity. Case closed.