SAVOY THEATRE TARTAN
Highland dancer to wear special tartan while performing for Queen.
The Savoy Theatre’s tartan is going to have its royal debut when a Dartmouth-based highland dancer wears it for her performance before Queen Elizabeth on Aug. 22.
Created in 2017 by Deana Lloy, owner of Sydney-based Red Label Kilts, the tartan is called Behind the Red Curtain.
Lloy was commissioned by Kathleen Higgins, owner of Higgins School of Highland Dance, to make her a kilt using the tartan because Higgins has Cape Breton roots.
“It’s pretty amazing. I feel pretty proud. My grandmother was a big supporter of the Queen. She read everything royal,” said Lloy, who has been making kilts and tartans for 23 years.
“She would be pretty proud so it’s emotional.”
Higgins, 32, comes from a musical family and her grandfather, Dave Watts, was a coal miner and one of the founding members of the Men of the Deeps.
“Many times he crossed the stage of the Savoy so the tartan was very fitting for her,” Lloy said during a phone interview.
Higgins’ grandfather isn’t her only Cape Breton connection.
Terrance Hill is her father and he started the music program at Breton Education Centre in New Waterford, the year it opened. He was also an assistant director and accompanist for the Men of the Deeps in the 1970s.
Fourteen dancers from Higgins’ school are performing for Queen Elizabeth on Aug. 22 at Balmoral Castle in Scotland.
Besides the kilt Higgins is wearing, three other dancers are also wearing kilts designed by Lloy using her original Dartmouth City Lakes tartan. The Balmoral performance is the last of a week of shows and competitions for the Nova Scotia group in the United Kingdom.
Higgins has been dancing since she was 14 years old and opened her school, which also has an adult program, when she was 22.