THE streets of Manhattan should have echoed to the skirl o’ the pipes for New York’s annual Tartan Day parade on Monday – but while the coronavirus crisis saw the event cancelled, that didn’t stop a group of Highland dancers from Helensburgh joining in.

Twelve pupils from the Margaret Rose School of Dance responded to a request from the parade’s organisers for dancers the world over to film themselves dancing to create a global ‘virtual’ parade.

The worldwide parade was also something of a consolation for the pupils from the Helensburgh dance school who had been looking forward to spending part of their Easter break dancing on the other side of the world.

The school’s trip – not to the Big Apple, but to Australia – was an early casualty of the pandemic lockdown, while Highland Games and dancing competitions closer to home this spring and summer have also fallen victim to worldwide efforts to slow the spread of the virus.

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But teacher Margaret MacInnes quickly saw an opportunity for the 12 pupils – whether or not they’d been making plans to travel to Australia – to focus their efforts elsewhere.

Margaret said: “The Tartan Day parade committee very quickly decided to create a virtual parade after the real one was cancelled, and asked dancers around the world to put on their outfits and film themselves dancing for a compilation video.

“It’s something to let them get back into their outfits and give them something to work towards and get excited about.

“We’ve always wanted to do the Tartan Day parade, but we’ve never been able to – though we didn’t expect to get involved quite like this.”

Margaret is continuing to teach pupils where she can via Facebook Messenger, Facetime and Zoom, but the usual busy summer programme of events for Helensburgh’s Highland dancers has almost completely disappeared because of the pandemic, with the Cowal Highland Gathering at the end of August the only major contest not yet cancelled.

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“It’s hard to keep dancers motivated now that everything has been called off – apart, at the moment, from Cowal,” she added.

“Some of our dancers had been due to go to Canada in July as well, but that’s been cancelled, just like almost everything else.

“Doing this gave them something to aim for.”

And dance competitions aren’t the only events of significance to Margaret to have been called off.

She had been due to receive her British Empire Medal, awarded in the New Year honours list, at a ceremony in June, but that, too, has been beaten by the outbreak.

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