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I wrote a morris dance!
I've been dancing with the Quayside Cloggies for nearly a year now (and had danced with another North-West morris side for many years in the past).
I'd often thought it would be interesting to write a dance and our Foreman agreed to let me have a go.
Took me ages. I mean, you could slap a simple dance together in about 10 seconds flat - and I did it once for a spur of the moment morris workshop at a convention, but re-using basic figures from other dances isn't really the point of creating a new dance.
The interesting thing is to try and create new figures that still look right within the North-West tradition. They must also avoid being so complex that the dancers get lost. A good dance should have sense of internal consistency - it should be possible to view the overall logic of the dance, so that a dancer having learned it in one position should have a reasonable chance of being able to dance it in the other seven positions.
The figures should also move naturally into one another. This is often the part that is least understood and overlooked. Anyone who has danced a good Playford dance will know what I'm talking about. If a Playford (it's a historical court dance) dance has a right hand turn followed by another figure, then it's good money that the figure will start with the left hand as that is the hand that you have free and moving forward. If it doesn't start with the left hand, then it will probably start in a way that uses the movement from the right-hand turn. It's hard to explain unless you dance set dances a lot.
Ceilidh dances rarely go in for that degree of precision - it isn't what they're about. Ceilidh dancing isn't for display. The figures are designed to be easy to learn and MUST be easy for the caller to explain in a short period of time.
A typical North-West morris dance will include a couple of simple figures (it's all about the shape of the dance rather than complex footwork) that form clear patterns for the audience to see. (Cotswold morris has a lot more footwork)
The more complex figures must still make a visible pattern. There would be no point in a complex figure that didn't look attractive to the audience. (Wheras in rapper dancing, complexity is half the point of the dance)
The dance must also fit the music. Self-evident, but not as simple as it might sound. You've got to work out things like how many steps it takes for a dancer to get right around the set of eight people, how long it takes to do a grand chain, a star, etc.
I spent many short sessions with toy bricks marking the position of dancers and dancing around on the wide pavement outside our house. The neighbours probably think I'm nuts anyway... (I practise my poi out there too)
We tried it at the practice session last night and it worked very well. I've had to clarify my notes in several places - it's amazing how ambiguous things can be when other people read them!
We've changed the music for the figures (the chorus remains unchanged - Keel Row) as the band felt the two tunes I was using were hard to shift between. (I think the tune they picked as an alternative for the figures - Jenny Lind - is better than the one I'd picked).
Several of the figures will need more practice to get them perfect, but in the course of a couple of hours it all stated to gell together really well.
Having called it all evening, I was offered the chance to dance. Crossed my fingers, said I could dance it in any position, was given number 3 (as someone needed to sit down for a rest) and - thank goodness - managed the entire dance with other real dancers, instead of bricks, right through first time without a hitch. Phew!
Felt great!
I'd often thought it would be interesting to write a dance and our Foreman agreed to let me have a go.
Took me ages. I mean, you could slap a simple dance together in about 10 seconds flat - and I did it once for a spur of the moment morris workshop at a convention, but re-using basic figures from other dances isn't really the point of creating a new dance.
The interesting thing is to try and create new figures that still look right within the North-West tradition. They must also avoid being so complex that the dancers get lost. A good dance should have sense of internal consistency - it should be possible to view the overall logic of the dance, so that a dancer having learned it in one position should have a reasonable chance of being able to dance it in the other seven positions.
The figures should also move naturally into one another. This is often the part that is least understood and overlooked. Anyone who has danced a good Playford dance will know what I'm talking about. If a Playford (it's a historical court dance) dance has a right hand turn followed by another figure, then it's good money that the figure will start with the left hand as that is the hand that you have free and moving forward. If it doesn't start with the left hand, then it will probably start in a way that uses the movement from the right-hand turn. It's hard to explain unless you dance set dances a lot.
Ceilidh dances rarely go in for that degree of precision - it isn't what they're about. Ceilidh dancing isn't for display. The figures are designed to be easy to learn and MUST be easy for the caller to explain in a short period of time.
A typical North-West morris dance will include a couple of simple figures (it's all about the shape of the dance rather than complex footwork) that form clear patterns for the audience to see. (Cotswold morris has a lot more footwork)
The more complex figures must still make a visible pattern. There would be no point in a complex figure that didn't look attractive to the audience. (Wheras in rapper dancing, complexity is half the point of the dance)
The dance must also fit the music. Self-evident, but not as simple as it might sound. You've got to work out things like how many steps it takes for a dancer to get right around the set of eight people, how long it takes to do a grand chain, a star, etc.
I spent many short sessions with toy bricks marking the position of dancers and dancing around on the wide pavement outside our house. The neighbours probably think I'm nuts anyway... (I practise my poi out there too)
We tried it at the practice session last night and it worked very well. I've had to clarify my notes in several places - it's amazing how ambiguous things can be when other people read them!
We've changed the music for the figures (the chorus remains unchanged - Keel Row) as the band felt the two tunes I was using were hard to shift between. (I think the tune they picked as an alternative for the figures - Jenny Lind - is better than the one I'd picked).
Several of the figures will need more practice to get them perfect, but in the course of a couple of hours it all stated to gell together really well.
Having called it all evening, I was offered the chance to dance. Crossed my fingers, said I could dance it in any position, was given number 3 (as someone needed to sit down for a rest) and - thank goodness - managed the entire dance with other real dancers, instead of bricks, right through first time without a hitch. Phew!
Felt great!
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(And it was it was amusing - in a non-derogatory way - to watch other people watching you work your way though in your head it by a bus stop, too. :-) )
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(The fencing icon is because Spanish fencing has been described as an excellent way to practice your dance steps.)
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It was good to read all the variables you had to work through.
I am always impressed by the choreography done for our shows and that's starting with set music (with the option to cut some if it seems too long).
I wonder if they use bricks too? I always assumed it was little crosses on a piece of paper - especially for the "and this is the shape you need to move into" bits.
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I had some set music in a way. I'd been chatting to one of the band several months before and he'd mentioned that there were some tunes they knew that didn't have dances to go with them. So I used those tunes as a starting point.
The choice of 'Keel Row' for the chorus had a big impact on the choreography and caused the addition of four Lancashire rant steps to fit a bit of music that had exactly the right rhythm for them.
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I've choreographed solos and duets for Egyptian dance, and contributed to the composition of dance sequences for tribal so I know how satisfying it when something works. It's also a great feeling when you work out why something just isn't quite right and figure out what to do to make it right. That happened with one of my Egyptian solos - I swapped two sequences of moves around and discovered that the one blended into the other much more successfully that way.
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