The musical coming to Pitlochry which made Scottish ceilidh dancing a US TikTok sensation

Scott Gilmour and Claire McKenzie, the Scottish writers of the musical Ceilidh, which is to have its UK premiere in Pitlochry next month, have spoken of the impact of the show after it was performed in Baltimore.

The hype around the show started when a Baltimore teacher who had seen Ceilidh with her friends early in the run liked it so much she brought her students back to see it.

Gilmour said: “As we were teaching the steps, [the students] wrote them all down in their notes app on their phones and then when it got to the interval, they all got up and performed it and filmed it and made a TikTok video of it. Then other kids their age started coming because of the TikToks. It was kind of like ceilidhs had been modernised, I couldn't believe it.”

The writers also told of how the show's US performances attracted Scottish immigrants who danced the traditional Scottish dances for the first time decades after leaving Scotland.

One 86-year- old Scot who had emigrated to the US said it was the first time she had danced a ceilidh since leaving. The story follows the narrative of a family passing on ceilidh dances and Scottish traditions through generations.

Gilmour added: “She had left Scotland when she was quite young, but her dad used to be a caller and to say that she knew the dances was an understatement. It was just in her, but it had been decades since she’d been to a ceilidh.”

Director and choreographer Sam Pinkerton said the US performances had been popular with the Scottish-American community. Many audience members turned up in kilts they had purchased specifically for the show.

He said: “There was actually quite a big Scottish population in Baltimore, people with Scottish ancestry and I think a lot of audiences saw the show as a way to be connected to roots that they might not usually get to connect to.”

Pinkerton said he had been concerned that the show would feel “like a Scottish export”, but said it had gone down well with test audiences in Glasgow.

He said: “We started developing the show in Glasgow with Scottish artists before it was premiered in the US and a question that we all had ‘is this going to work in Scotland?’ Because it's aggressively Scottish and I think in some ways it might feel like a cultural export. It might feel like something that was made by Scottish people to take places other than Scotland to give them a taste of something very Scottish.

“But we were amazed at how incredible the audiences in Glasgow were, how proud of the show they were and how much it resonated for a multi-generational audience, for an audience who wants to come to a ceilidh and have a dance, but also for an audience who wants to go to the theatre.”

Ceilidh premieres in Pitlochry Town Hall from 7 to 17 October as part of Alan Cumming’s inaugural season at Pitlochry Festival Theatre. The production then moves on to a UK-wide tour, which includes Edinburgh Corn Exchange, Aberdeen Music Hall and Dundee Caired Hall in January and Glasgow Barrowland in March.