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feature Fiddlers on a roll On Tuesday evenings, twice a month, St. Catherine's Anglican Church hall in Edgemont Village is especially lively. Whiteclad youngsters stream in for martial arts classes on the upper floor. They have a grand old time, kicking and punching. But they don't have half as much fun as the musicians of the Vancouver Fiddle Orchestra, who come for a bi-weekly fix of Scottish dance music and fill the downstairs rehearsal room with two hours of exhilarating fiddle, accordion, guitar, piano and drum. Jigs, reels and strathspeys are the lifeblood of the VFO, which consists of some twenty to thirty musicians. They play for dancers performing intricate maneuvers whose history dates back three hundred years. Since the 1920s, these historic dances have been supported formally, in Canada and elsewhere, by the Royal Scottish Country Dance Society. The RSCDS has more than twenty-five branches in the Lower Mainland alone. This specialized kind of Scottish dancing appeals to those who like the mathematical challenge of remembering the elaborate November | December On a good night a Vancouver Fiddle Orchestra performance sweeps everything before it like a wave. The good news is that every night's a good night. By Lois Meyers-Carter and varied dance steps. Each dance is like a game of chess set to the familiar rhythms of Scottish traditional music, with the patterned perfection of the group being the ultimate goal. Success in this is often celebrated with a full-dress annual ball. The men wear dress kilts, the ladies their best tartan skirts, the dinner features Scottish cuisine and is followed by dancing. For the last decade, the VFO has played the lilting music for many of these balls. The ensemble had its beginnings in 1990 when North Vancouver accordion player Ian Price met Scottish fiddler Tom Scott. Price had led the Schiehallion Scottish Country Dance Band for 13 years, while Scott had organized a group of fiddlers keenly interested in playing Scottish music. They saw an opportunity to continue the tradition of live dance music and to provide a collective performing outlet for musicians with a desire to develop their skills. A steady growth in numbers, skill and repertoire ever since has brought the VFO to the point where the power of a live performance feels like a wave rolling over the dance floor, sweeping all before it and carrying the dancers along on its crest.