Schottische
Also known as: Scotch, Schottish
History & Cultural Context
The Schottische emerged in Germany during the mid-19th century and became popular in Victorian ballrooms. The dance featured a distinctive step-hop pattern and moderate tempo. The schottische became part of both ballroom and folk traditions and remains popular in contemporary folk dance communities.
Cultural Significance
The schottische represented the Victorians' love of varied dance types and remains part of European folk traditions.
Peak Popularity
Signature Figures
- Step-Hop
- Turn
Notable Codifiers
- German tradition
Dance Lineage
Track Your Schottische Progress
Practice Schottische figures between lessons with Figure Focus — step-by-step breakdowns, floor diagrams, and progress tracking. Free to use.
Schottische Playlists
Curated collections on the LODance YouTube channel — performances to watch, lessons to learn from, and the right music to practice with. Tap a collection to play.
▶ Performances · Open on YouTube →
Schottische Music & Tempo
Drawn from 25 Schottische tracks in the LODance music library.
Example tracks at practice tempo
- Highland Schottische — Anonymous106 BPM
- Highland Schottische — Various (Victorian era)120 BPM
- Erinnerung an Ernst (Schottisch) — Johann Strauss I104 BPM
- Little Brown Jug — Joseph Winner120 BPM
- Sourwood Mountain — Traditional120 BPM
- Military Schottische — Various (Victorian era)112 BPM
What to Wear
Attire guidance for Schottische and other Historic Gilded Age Ballroom dances. Each card below is sized to the moment — class, practice, social, or competition — because the wardrobe shifts as the stakes do.
Reading the cards
In Class
Regular practice wear with smooth-soled shoes.
Social Dancing
Victorian/Edwardian ball events: women in corseted gowns with trains, men in white tie or period suits. Some events are less strict and welcome Edwardian-inspired modern formalwear.
Competition
Not competed; performed at Victorian balls and historical society events in period costume.
Shoes
Women: pointed-toe shoes with French heels (2"). Men: patent leather shoes or period boots. The era bridged between flat dancing and the heeled Latin shoes of the 20th century.
In Practice
Many Gilded Age groups practice corset-management — modern dancers underestimate how much the corset changes posture and breath.
Price Range
- Budget: Repurposed modern formalwear with period-adjacent silhouette; entry French-heel shoes $80–140.
- Mid: Reproduction Gilded Age gowns and white-tie pieces $400–1,500.
- Premium: Hand-tailored Edwardian costume $2,000–8,000+.
Quick Tips
- •Suede-soled shoes allow controlled sliding and pivoting — essential for most partner dances.
- •Avoid rubber soles on dance floors; they grip too much and can cause knee injuries.
- •Bring a separate pair of clean shoes for the dance floor to keep it in good condition.
Recommended Gear for Schottische
Essential equipment and apparel selected for dancers learning Schottische.
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Sources & Further Reading
Where This Dance Is Documented
Zorn (1887); Dodworth (1885)
An editor's note on where the technique for this dance is actually written down — sometimes a named book, sometimes the fact that no such book exists. A judgement, not a count of what we hold.
Cultural & Historical Context
Schottische emerged from Germany during the 1850s—1900s. Understanding the cultural roots, musical traditions, and social circumstances of this era enriches appreciation for the dance's characteristics and significance.
Formative Influences
Codifiers & Standardizers:
German tradition
Signature Movement Vocabulary:
Step-Hop, Turn
Primary Source Documents
The Library of Dance contains public-domain primary sources for dance history. Copyrighted modern syllabi are indexed with purchase links to their respective copyright owners. Search by dance name or codifier to discover primary source documents.
Last reviewed: August 2026 — This dance profile synthesizes historical research, cultural documentation, and contemporary practice knowledge to provide authoritative context.
Related Dances
More in Historic Gilded Age Ballroom
Polka
The Polka was a lively, bouncy couple dance from Bohemia that became enormously popular across Europe and America during the 19th century, featuring characteristic hop and turn.
Mazurka
The Mazurka was a lively Polish couple dance with syncopated rhythm and characteristic accent patterns, becoming popular in European ballrooms during the 19th century.
Galop
The Galop was a rapid, energetic couple dance with a distinctive galloping action, becoming a popular finish to Victorian ballroom evenings.
Victorian Waltz
Victorian waltz variations including the Redowa combined elements of waltz and polka with elaborate choreography, representing Gilded Age innovation in ballroom dancing.
Laendler
The Laendler was an Austrian peasant couple dance with turning action that influenced the development of the modern waltz and remains part of Alpine folk traditions.
Breakdown
A fast solo percussive dance created by enslaved African Americans, danced to fiddle and banjo tunes in quick duple time and often performed as a challenge between dancers. It carries one of the core movement vocabularies from which buck dancing, flatfooting and American tap descend. Its commercial spread in the 1840s and after ran through blackface minstrelsy, which took the material from Black dancers and sold it as caricature.
Clog
A percussive step dance performed in wooden-soled clogs, developed among mill and mine workers in northern England and built largely on hornpipe rhythms. It moved onto the music-hall stage as a championship solo turn in the nineteenth century and crossed to North America, where it fed both Appalachian step traditions and the variety stage. With African American percussive dance it is one of the two roots of American tap.
Hornpipe
A solo percussive dance in duple time, closely tied to a tune type of the same name and strongly associated with sailors through its long life on the theatrical stage. It is one of the three principal hard-shoe dances in Irish step dancing and the rhythmic basis of English clog. Its dotted, swung rhythm gives it a distinctly heavier and more deliberate feel than a reel.
Jig
A lively step dance in compound time, the central solo form of Irish dancing and a staple of Scottish and English fiddle repertoire. It exists in several distinct meters and shoe types, from the light 6/8 double jig to the slow, heavily percussive treble jig in hard shoes. The word has also served, in England and America, as a loose and sometimes derogatory label for percussive dance generally.
Reel
A fast dance in even duple time built on an alternation between an interweaving travelling figure and setting steps danced on the spot. It is one of the oldest continuously danced forms in the British Isles and the structural ancestor of a great deal of Scottish, Irish and North American social dance. The name refers at once to a tune type, a floor figure and a whole family of dances.
Strathspey
A Scottish dance and tune type in 4/4 distinguished by the Scotch snap, a short note on the beat followed by a longer dotted one, which gives it a jagged rhythm and a stately, sustained movement quality. It takes its name from the strath, or broad valley, of the River Spey. In both Highland and country dance it is conventionally paired with a reel, the slower dance setting up the faster one.
Country Dance
A figured set dance for groups of couples, worked through a repeating sequence of figures with the couples progressing to a new neighbour each time through the tune. It was the dominant social dance form in England for well over a century, and it is the root stock from which the French contredanse, the Cuban contradanza, the quadrille and the American contra dance all grew.
Habanera
A slow duple-time couple dance from Cuba, and the rhythmic cell that carries its name — a dotted first beat pulling against an even bass. It was made by Black and mixed-race Cuban musicians and dancers out of the imported contradanza, and it travelled back across the Atlantic into Spanish salons and stage music while also feeding Argentine tango and Brazilian maxixe.
Maxixe
A fast, syncopated close-hold couple dance from working-class Rio de Janeiro, built by Afro-Brazilian musicians and dancers who put the syncopation and body movement of lundu into the step patterns of the polka and the Cuban habanera. It was the first urban popular dance Brazil made for itself, and its rhythmic language runs directly into samba.
One Step
One step to each beat of a brisk two-four, with nothing else that has to be memorised. That simplicity made it the entry point for the social dance boom of the 1910s, and it is the direct ancestor of the American Peabody as well as one of the strands feeding the foxtrot and the quickstep.
Redowa
A turning couple dance in three-four from the Czech lands, taken up in Paris ballrooms in the mid-1840s on the back of the polka craze. Its step leaps rather than glides, which gives it a springing, pursuing quality quite unlike the smooth continuous swing of the waltz.
Varsovienne
A slow triple-time couple dance in the mazurka family that appeared in Parisian ballrooms in the early 1850s and took its name from Warsaw. It is recognisable by the pause: the couple glides, then holds a pointed foot on an accented beat, so the dance alternates between travel and arrest.
Viennese Waltz
The rotary couple dance of nineteenth-century ballrooms: continuous turning in a closed hold at speed, danced socially and improvised rather than assembled from a syllabus. It emerged from alpine Ländler and Deutscher turning dances in the 1780s and defined social dancing through the Strauss era, and the modern competition dance of the same name is a twentieth-century codification of it rather than the same thing.
What did dancers wear?
Schottische belongs to the Regency & Victorian (1800s) era. See how attire shaped the choreography — and the other way around.
Explore Regency & Victorian attire →Schottische in art
Browse the gallery →Public-domain works our catalogue identifies as depicting schottische.
La Normandie: schottische, as danced by Mr. Righton, in his entertainment, entitled A tale of the times
Unknown artist
Fairy land schottisch by Van der Weyde
Unknown artist
The midnight schottisch
Unknown artist
Ballroom dancing on British and American 19th-century music covers
Unknown artist
The opera schottisch: (the Italian opera at Castle Garden)
Unknown artist
Harry Beard Collection
unknown
Mrs. Bloomer's Own
E. Reyloff
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