[caveat emptor]

I’ve worn some toe shoes (the pink ones) in my time, which have heavily plaster-reinforced toes. I have always been curious about the “ghilies” of your second photo, used in Celtic dancing. How do they work?

Former dancer? En pointe ballet steps require specially reinforced shoes (as you indicate). The second shoes are ghillies, worn by men and women in Scottish Country Dancing, and Highland Dancing. These are soft shoes, with no reinforced toe. It would take an amazing dancer to dance en point in these. In SCD women more often wear a ballet type shoe without the reinforcement needed for en pointe. Very good dancers sometimes bring their feet into the position shown in my post, but not while the feet are bearing their weight.

Both types of dance are done throughout the English speaking world and beyond. Both types of dance are fairly standardized, with the standards of Highland Dancing being generally higher, since it is competitive, solo dancing, while SCD is primarily social and not competitive. SCD is usually a great deal of fun and not so much hard work. Here is a sample of very glitzy SCD with a moderately high standard of dance done at some BBC event. Best viewed with high speed internet, though with time and patience you can use dialup, then replay. IIRC it's a Glasgow dance team, and should have very good dancers, but I would say the men seem a bit "wet" and do not have the "presence" of strong male dancers.

You don't have to be Scottish or have a partner to do SCD. Check out Scottish Country Dancing on YouTube and Freepmail me if you'd like to know more.

[Mamzelle]

I’ve seen some riverdance-type performances, and while the dancers do not spend much time en pointe like classic ballet dancers do, they do manage moments where they do seem to bear weight at the tips of their toes! It may be an illusion, but an impressive one.

[Robert A Cook PE]

Here is a sample of very glitzy SCD with a moderately high standard of dance done at some BBC event. Best viewed with high speed internet, though with time and patience you can use dialup, then replay. IIRC it's a Glasgow dance team, and should have very good dancers, but I would say the men seem a bit "wet" and do not have the "presence" of strong male dancers.

You don't have to be Scottish or have a partner to do SCD. Check out Scottish Country Dancing on YouTube and Freepmail me if you'd like to know more.

The “reel” - starting at about minute 2:30 of the Scottish Dance video is similar to the “basic level” of America Square dancing.

Typical square dance caller routine will have a pattern call of switching and exchanging partners more rapidly and vigorously than this dance - but using almost all of the same swings-your-partner, dos-si-dos, alemand-left, alamand-right, etc, etc that these are using. For basic square dancing I'd estimate there are thirty some-odd individual moves, but any (or all) of them are inserted at different times by the callers. Here, the whole routine is more stylized and fixed - but, of course, there is no caller either.

A good square dance caller will break all of the partners up, exchange and swap them - sometimes even with other squares across the room - then at the end of the dance, be able to get everybody back in their own square with their own partner.

(So of course, if you start off in the lead square at a square dance convention with your partners already swapped and switched, ....)

Advanced I and advanced II square dancers use even more moves and calls.

After the square dance pattern call, the caller will change to a dance pattern with a simpler routine of exchanging each partner with the one on your right, going through 4 repetitions of equal steps to get back at the end “go home with the one that brung ya”