Hey Nonny Nonny - English Dancing

I was hoping to be involved in a creative project about morris dancing, but it looks as if the money won't be forthcoming now so we have abandoned the idea. Sigh.

Having put together a proposal, I got a bit obsessed about it, so I'm relieving my feelings by this post on morris dancing. (WARNING: if you're not interested in morris dancing, stop here NOW!!!!)

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I guess most people reading this will know that Morris dancers come in all shapes and sizes. Mostly they seem to be the old men with flowered hats and lots of little bells tied around their legs who inexplicably dance around in the street, to the mild astonishment of passers by ... like this...

Laughing yet? Laughing at our authentic folk traditions, such as morris dancers. is pretty well an English tradition in itself. But inclusiveness is also part of the tradition. People do join in, despite their sneers and sighs, and anyone of any age can dance any way they choose. Clumpy, scary, elegant, cute.... which is one of the things that I love, because this makes it really creative.

There's a real trend at present for Dark Morris. Here is one of the original dark morris "sides," Hunters Moon, performing in the old Dorset town of Wimborne (Several members of my extended family live a few moments' walk from this scene, and I keep scanning the crowds to see if I can spot any of them)

Morris dancers come to village fetes and festivals, open days for big houses, and tourist events, or they will turn up at pubs and dance in exchange for beer. They're usually accompanied by accordions and drums, although in the olden days it was more likely a pipe and drum. I don't know when the squeeze box came in.

Usually the dancers are not ...hem hem.... what you'd call overlooked Nureyevs or Baryshnikovs. But sometimes, people research the old steps properly and then they can look very graceful. When you see young skilled dancers, you can get a feeling of the artistic skill and liveliness that originally characterised the dances, when they would certainly have been done by healthy young people.

Look at the lovely pair of dancers on the following clip. You sometimes see old wood engravings from hundreds of years ago which show Morris dancers in just these attitudes.

The two above are dressed in the traditional white outfits with flowers and bells, but morris dancers can dress in extremely creative outfits. Occasionally you think perhaps the dancers just want to make it hard for themselves. There is even a side dressed like Daleks, the famous baddies from "Dr. Who." Unfortunately I don't have any good clips of them, but what about dancing blindfold like this lot?

Morris dancing really is very old and morris men (and women) are linked with old fertility rituals and folk events. There are usually Morris dancers at Stonehenge at the solstice, for instance, and I like the good humoured druids on this clip - at least I think that is what they are. And I spot a Welsh dragon amongst the dancers.

Often there is an extra figure in the dance - a Hobby Horse or a Fool whose job is to dance around and get in the way. This side, who had the bright idea of performing the old Oxfordshire dance of "Shepherd's Hey" in a swimming pool, may not really need a Fool...??? Click the link here for the orchestral version of Shepherd's Hey, in case you want to hear it. It does not have much in common with the trombonist's version in the pool :D

.... specially since the men are singing in a different key to the trombone.

Here's "Shepherd's Hey" performed in the traditional way by the Moulton Men. Their Fool is an old woman who doesn't do a great deal, but some fools really mess things up. You will hear both groups singing (or shouting) the words of the old folk song before they start to dance.

Occasionally efforts are made to interest foreigners in morris dancing. I found part of an American documentary of 1929, in which dancers from the English Folk Dance and Song Society performed in Hastings-on-Hudson, NY.

The dancers on the 1929 film do a number of well known dances including the Furry Dance which is a big deal in Helston, Cornwall each May ...

The first dance on the 1929 film is a sword dance, popular in the North of England. (You may notice that the music is quite Celtic.) This type of dancing is also alive and well today. Here are some modern rapper dancers, in a more congenial (i.e slightly drunken) atmosphere. As you hear, the crowd wanted them to "get on with it!"

And talking of early films, the ones below were shot in 1912 - silent, of course. The English Folk Dance and Song Society has an archive with details of many of these traditional dances, which they collected from country folk at a time when they were seen as hopelessly old fashioned and were at some risk of dying out (even though they never did die).

The gym slip the lady is wearing is a bit disconcerting, but of course in those days the gym slip didn't really signify "St. Trinians" or "Kinky school dinners club" like it does now. It was a light and practical garment used by women who wanted to do physical exercise and didn't want to have to do it wearing hideous whalebone-corseted outfits like this:

Another thing I love about Morris is that many of the tunes are very old indeed. Here are the Gloucester Men rehearsing the Staines Morris, which I think is a nice old tune. (You'll see they have a Hobby Horse as their symbol, but they are not in costume for this rehearsal)

Morris probably aped the kind of dancing that the grand people did. I'm no dance expert, so if you are, please correct me. But I'm interested in the sort of rough "contretemps" step (I think that's the name of it) that the guys above do sometimes. Dancing like this must have looked comical and "country bumpkin" to the posh folk of the time.

Here for comparison is some historic upper class dancing, below. Every single movement of hands and feet and head had to be exact, and the rich folk spent hours and hours and hours learning how to acquire this accomplishment. It looks wonderful, even when danced to the rather scrapy music here.

How frustrating for poor people who were gifted dancers, because they would have been barred from these routines and forced to dance the morris. But in general, the laid back "everyone welcome" atmosphere of the morris probably meant that the rustics had a better time and more of a laugh than many grand folk.

I'll leave you with this delightful little movie of the decommissioning celebrations of the Xeikon printing machine at Mercian Labels, Ltd. A farewell dance to the trusty old machine by a Birmingham morris side, with the office staff joining in.

So, in conclusion, I am really sorry that this project isn't going to happen now. I think these guys have missed out on something good.