Judith Proctor's Journal

The Morris Federation have been producing a series of short videos for many of their members.  The aim is to get as many shares as possible, in order to boost the number of people reached.

So, here's the short video for Southern Star Longsword.  We're a small, friendly team, who welcome men, women and children. We meet in Corfe Mullen on Monday evening.  We're especially keen to recruit new musicians at present.

 Just back from several days a Chippenham Folk  Festival. Shattered, but had a good time.

Two days before the festival, the lady who was to be calling the maypole and doing the children's morris had to go into hospital (she should be fine, nothing too serious).  

So, I got asked to take it over at short notice.

Fortunately, the original musician was still able to make it, and proved to be the best person I've ever worked with for maypole. He never had to be asked to speed up or slow down, he automatically matched the best pace for the dancers and played a bar or two extra slowly when a small child needed to cross the dance set.

It was good, especially as having a lot of adults in the set allowed me to use a greater range of dances.

We did (my granddaughter and I) an entry for Southern Star Longsword in the annual Chippenham 'Stick and Bucket' competition.  As Southern Star was founded because of a Discworld convention, we had to enter...

Only having two dancers present did not deter us in the least.  We took spare swords and buckets and trained a scratch team.  One of the team had a mere 10 mins practice before the performance!

Here's the performance - Southern Star are 5 mins into the video, but you can watch all the teams entering.  

The man in the orangutan outfit is my husband, Richard.  That's his collection costume for fesivals - he's a Pratchett fan as well...

 See this video from Wessex folk Festival last weekend.

See if you can spot me (it should be pretty easy) dancing with both Anonymous Morris and Southern Star.  You also get to see some of those waistcoats I've spent so much time sewing.

I think this was the best performance Southern Star Longsword have every done, and the clip is of the best part of that!

 Two years ago, Southern Star Longsword had five members over the age of 60, one around 50 and two in their late thirties, plus one child.

Now, we have four members under 15, three over 60, plus three in the 30-45 bracket.
 

That's a major demographic shift! 

We lost the two oldest and gained three more youngsters.  Most morris teams (although not Anonymous) are heading in the opposite direction as their members grow older.

It's mostly good luck, but it did help having Oswin (my granddaughter) as that starting child.  Our latest recruit is her best friend at school, who has been regaled with tales of how much fun sword dancing is.  Said friend has been to two practice sessions now and seems to be having a whale of a time!

 I belong a sword dance group and a morris team, as some of you will already know.

I think it will be a while yet before Anonymous Morris resume practice - they're a large team, and not all of them are keen on practicing outdoors.

Southern Star Longsword are in a better place than most.  Three of our members are in the same household, and we have a three man dance, so when the rule of six allowed, we practiced in a cul de sac our socially distanced  musicians were able to play for them.

Then we added Bouffons to our repertoire -a 16th century matachine dance (a form of sword dance) for four  in which the dancers are conveniently 2m apart.

We've booked random local halls when allowed to practice indoors, even resorting to maypole dancing at one point as a way of keeping apart from each other (maypole for four requires creative choreography!)

So, we've been able to practice legally  for a fair part of lockdown.

Now, from Monday, we can practice round the back of our local pub (which we often do in the summer months), and we're thinking about recruiting new members...  We've only got five regular dancers (number 6 is highly vulnerable and wants to continue shielding for now) and two of us have doubled up as musicians during lockdown as our normal musician is also shielding.

We're planning a three fold campaign. We've started on Facebook, and with luck, several new people might come along on Monday to see what we're like.  (I shall hope for two, as more people always express interest than actually follow through)  The local community group has proved a good place to post.  

This is the key photo we're using.

Experience tells me that women will join a team with men, but men are less more likely to join a team that's mostly women.

Rowan's our only bloke, as well as probably being the youngest,, so he gets to be on the publicity.  (The whole team are okay with this - we know the psychology - and besides, he's Squire and his mum and sister are also in the team.)

Also, he looks like he's enjoying himself, and he's holding a sword lock, and it's a good, clear photo.

Over Neighbour's Sword
Each man takes 8 steps, 4 bars. The man in front lowers his sword almost to ground level.

Stepping:

l r/l r/hr l/hl r//

Left foot over first. Half turn to face back, completed as left foot goes over, completing turn that man raises his own sword and ½ turn anti-clockwise under it to face back, hop over, getting straight by raising neighbour's sword, which helps next man to turn ready to go over. 

“"4gJ>+e;

-L,-~ 1/M t.,§v~¢1 ‘-vi-o r-f\~\~7

Ll P 4;“ K-»G\j~4- c£-~=c

32 .

2° ;*

“Q

so I'm using the OCR where I can read it, and just doing the rest from scratch.

It's actually quite relaxing, as long as I don't over do it and trigger the RSI.