The Ottawa Citizen from Ottawa, Ontario, Canada • 25

Giifl Gilchrist steps out, right, with father Donnie, longtime champion of the Valley art of stepdance Wayne CuddingtoK Citizen Citizen 4 entertainmentbusinesscareers Ottawa, Saturday, Oct. 4, 1980, Page 25t Xrf WMSSIM twf xXxxmxSlxXM V. Iff hK mm r. 4. BmciBg the SB steps of A master the 'The art would have died but for me taking up the cause of it 30 years ago.

Today, if they haven't got it from me, they got it from somebody I taught' Donnie Gilchrist ture and cultural significance of stepdancing in fhis area. Both the Gilchrists want to preserve stepdancing traditions, and ensure the dance is properly taught. Donnie has been teaching for 35 of his 54 years. "This art would have died had it not been for me taking up the cause of it 30 years ago," says Donnie. "Today, if they haven't got it from me, they got it from somebody I taught." Each day Donnie rises at 3:45 a.m., bicycles to the House of Commons, where he is a working foreman, returns at noon, and then teaches his handpicked pupils.

The students come from Toronto, Montreal, and even as far away as British Columbia to be taught by nie Gilchrist. By Audrey M. Ashley Citizen music and drama editor Gina Gilchrist is following her father's footsteps literally. The daughter of step-dancing champion Donnie Gilchrist, fired by his enthusiasm for an ancient art, has become a champion and a teacher in her own right. But whereas Donnie learned his dancing from the lumbermen of the Ottawa Valley, and danced for the money thrown on the floors of Hull bars during the dirty '30s, 24-year-old Gina has taken a more academic route.

In the course of taking an honors degree in physical education, Gina has written a research paper on the na The walls of his basement apartment are covered with mementoes of his achievements a world tour for the CBC in 1967 that covered 24 countries, 18 appearances on TV's Don Messer Show, his tour of France as ern U.S., including the Spoleto-Festival in South Carolina. Donnie plays a tape recording of dancing feet his and Gina's and can tell who is dancing. a leading dancer with Les Feux Follets. That me now. The style, is heavier.

I'm a heavyw- At the behest of the Department of External Affairs, eight in the world of step-dancing," he adds with pride. "I am the Donnie and Gina have danced in New York, Washing ton, and various other points in the Eastern and South "rv -x If Lee Grant in Montreal movie into shock A wooden floor is bolted together over the carpet. Putting on his dancing shoes, Donnie hitches up his turns up the cuffs to free his feet, and demonstrates an Irish jig. He carries his 152 pounds lightly as he moves around the floor "I use every inch of whatever stage I'm on." Clog dances, hornpipes, jigs, reels, the flat-footed dancing found in Georgia all are part of Donnie's repertoire. Donnie and Gina are concerned mostly with the stepdancing brought to the Ottawa Valley by the first Irish settlers.

Every note of the music is the tapping feet, while the dancer's arms hang quiet and straight at the sides. The traditional "battering" was done in hard-soled boots, but today's dancers wear metal taps on toes and heels sometimes double taps Jo make the sound carry in a large hall. "My grandfather was a walking boss," explains GInal "He always kept in touch with good musicians, because that kept the men happy, and they worked Music is important. Donnie, dances to the music of Graham Townsend, five times North American folk fiddle champion, and Quebec's renowned Jean Carignan. Besides the step-dancing, Gina teaches Irish set dancing, Scottish country dancing, highland dancing, and traditional Canadian square dancing, which she says is in danger of being swamped by American influences.

Teaches up to 400 steps Donnie teaches his students between 300 and 400 steps, and then they start to improvise. Gina starts people off with a slow reel, to clog music. In both studios, the sound of "Brush-brush-step, hop-toe-step, hop-shuffle-hop" can be heard as the fiddles play. The Scottish in Glengarry and Cape Breton dance; so do the Germans and Poles around Barry's Bay, and the Indians of Maniwaki, who learned it from the Irish. But as Donnie Gilchrist says, "There's no in North America that is as great for traditional dancing as right here in this valley." Once more By Ina Warren Canadian Press staff writer MONTREAL One way or another, Lee Grant has always had a startling effect on the movie screen.

Her debut as a shop-lifter in Billy Wyler's 1951 cop classic Detective Story lasted less than 15 minutes, yet it got her the Cannes Film Festival's coveted best actress award. Lately, those wide-set blue eyes, exquisite vulpine jaw and throaty voice have made her a natural, for delivering fright. In Damien, sequel to The Omen, she was superb as the serene, well-to-do wife and mother who skewers doting husband William Holden in the guts. In the television movie that launched the Columbo series, she was equally ominous as the dastardly lady lawyer who deftly disposes of her husband. Now she's in Montreal to star in The Fright, her first Canadian movie and a $6,000,000 shocker with William Shatner and Linda Purl.

Made by Film'plan, the Montreal company which gave us Gas with Donald Sutherland and Susan Ans-pach, it's the first English-language venture of Quebec director Jean-Claude Lord. The producers are cagey about giving away their plot, but it is known that Grant plays an intrepid reporter who has a heart attack and winds up in a hospital where a psychopathic killer is out to get her. William Shatner is the news director of a television station, and provides the love interest. How does an actress who started on Broadway, has won two Emmys and the coveted Oscar for her searing rich-bitch performance in Shampoo, feel about fright roles? "I love it," she says with a smile. Still, starring in movies like The Fright is not.

what the small, slender actress is primarily about. In the last year she also directed her first feature movie with Melvyn Douglas and finished editing her first documentary, a film about striking female bank employees in a mid-West town. And all this with one daughter starring in a Broadway musical, another in the fourth grade, producer husband Joe Feury down with hepatitis and a house in Malibu blown away by a small tornado. She is confident that Tell Me a Riddle, the new movie she has directed starring Melvyn Douglas and Lila Kedrova, will have that sense of value. Based on a novella by Tillie Ilsen, it's the story of an old couple who came to America in 1910 from Russia where they had been regarded as dissidents.

"It's a beautiful film and it has meaning," says Lee Grant: 7 love it' Miss Grant, whose own mother came from Odessa. Tell Me a Riddle is not a Hollywood film. "Hollywood, are you kidding?" she interjects. The money, just over $1 million, was raised by three young San Francisco women. "I hope it's risky," Miss Grant says.

"I don't want to fit into any category. The only category I'm interested in is the human one." Some very good people, some bad after car accident BROWN'S BEAT Dave Brown LA If you've never been through a serious car accident, here's a good idea of what if feels like from Byron Martin, catering manager at the Talisman Hotel who is still recovering from an Aug. 31 accident. He and wife Sharon spent two weeks in hospital. Their children Emily, 4, and George, 2, were not injured.

Their '77 Chev was totalled in the two-car crash on Woodroffe Avenue near Fal-lowfield "When we think back trying to piece together what happened," says Martin, "both Sharon and I have scattered memories of some very good people. A man I wouldn't recognize took me out of the car and put something under my head and covered me. He probably thought I was unconscious but he kept reassuring me everything would be all right. That nobody was dead. At one point I remember opening my eyes and seeing a woman slightly older than myself holding Georgie and soothing him and letting me see that he was all right The man beside me told me Sharon was right with me and would be all were in hospital their Southampton Court home was broken into and they lost more than $300.

Fancy that Earlier this week in this column we told the story of the reactions of a woman who thought she saw "some kind of rodent" under her table while visiting the Moorside Tea Room at Kingsmere. She jumped up onto a window ledge and entertained the room by dancing and screaming. She said after the incident she was surprised at the lack of concern by staff "That's understandable," says Fiona Hyslop, a member of the Ga-tineau Historical Society, which operates the tea room. "It had to be our resident chipmunk. We're pretty used to "him." For the past two years the little guy has been haunting the door, says Hyslop.

He squirts in every chance he gets. Although staff has been encouraged not to feed him he seems to be having some luck at begging. "He's pretty fat and sleek." year ago the story was told about how we tested this woman's "powers" came away impressed. 'I Street talk Radio names on the move. Bill Lee, former program director at OY, holding down a PD's spot in Red Deer, Alta Former OY talker Bill Roberts has a talk show on all-news CKO in Montreal And former OY newsman Gordon Breen, after a stint in Sherbrooke, is now showing up on both CFRA and' CFMO.

Parting shot A bit of information that could make anybody the hit of the next cocktail ty if they just find a way to casually work it into conversation There are, 336 dimples on a golf ball. That fact is in the latest Farmers' Almanac. And in case there's any doubt, adman Bill Pols- ky had his game rained out Thursday and spent the time with a golf ball and marking pen checking the facts. He concurs. i cruet What's new There have been some strange methods used to raise money for the Terry Fox Cancer Fund.

Here's one of the latest and strangest. Starting Wednesday night and every Wednesday night after that, we all have a chance to sip a few, get a bit gibbled and have our minds read What it boils down to is that psychic Margaret Munson will be offering her services as both singer and psychic, along with Dick Maloney at the Casablanca on Rideau Street. Those wishing to test Munson's powers will be asked to make a donation to the fund In one of these columns more than a right, but I couldn't turn to see her. He said we would be going to hospital in separate ambulances and I think he was with me in the ambulance, but I can't be sure. I just remember being constantly reassured and told what was happening.

I needed that" After the shock of the 7 p.m. accident, all that was needed was time A sour note: While they.