North West morris dancing at Odyssey

[watervole]

Now that I've hopefully got you briefly interested in North West morris, I should mention that I'm doing a morris workshop on Friday and Monday mornings.  (the other mornings are frostfox  doing belly dancing and another fan doing Lindy Hop)

No experience required.  Total beginners (which will probably be everyone except me) very welcome.

Traditionally, it was mostly danced by men.  Today, both men and women dance, though single sex sides are almost the norm.

Musicians welcome (we've already got a skilled accordion player in the form of SF writer Tony Ballantyne)  I'll bring along a bodhran for anyone who wants to bang a drum.

I'm borrowing a set of sticks from my local morris side, so there's enough for lots of dancers.

Comments

[sammason.livejournal.com]

Belated response to this. I haven't looked up anything about Morris history - you evidently know quite a bit on that topic, but I just danced because I liked dancing. So you're probably right about Border being a recreated tradition. Perhaps that's why it's so popular with sides who want to make their own material, often drawing on modern themes such as Goth clothing. No doubt you're familiar with the S&M side in California who sew bells onto their skin before each performance. I haven't met them, or seen them dance, but I'd put money on it that their style is Border.

[watervole.livejournal.com]

I was dancing for many years before I became interested in the history. I'm not quite sure what sparked the interest - it may have been a play about Mary Neal that I saw at Sidmouth Festival one year. - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mary_Neal - if I was more awake, I'd expand that Wikipedia entry. Maybe I will some day.

She was a contempory of Cecil Sharpe. He was the first person to collect morris dances, but she was the person who actually started teaching people to dance them.

Many sides of all traditions develop their own dances. There's lots of new North West dances. I suspect Cotswold sides tend to be the most conservative.

I'm not sure if the S+M side are real or just a myth.

[sammason.livejournal.com]

They are, or perhaps were, the White Rats. (http://www.whiteratsmorris.org/questions.html#1) I never met them but 12 years or so ago I was part of an email-based forum about Morris and one of their dancers was quite vocal there.

You're probably right about Cotswold sides being often conservative, from my impressions, but now you mention it I wonder why it would be so.

[watervole.livejournal.com]

Thanks - that's an interesting web site. Hasn't been updated for a couple of years, so I hope they're still dancing.

I think I'll do a fresh post at some time about whether Cotswold sides are more conservative and possible reasons why. That will need some thinking, and possibly some research. I have ideas, but they'll need developing.