morris dance - History in England, Styles, Terminology

A form of traditional dance dating back to the 15th-c, found in England, but with continental European equivalents. Its distinctive features are stamping and hopping performed by rows or circles of performers usually dressed in white and always carrying some prop - a stick, handkerchief, or garland, and traditionally a hobby-horse or inflated pig's bladder. Some wear bells, and hats brightly decorated with rosettes and ribbons. They are accompanied by accordion or concertina with bass drum. Morris dancing has enjoyed a popular revival in recent decades; what was once an exclusively male dance is now increasingly performed by women's or mixed groups.

A morris dance is a form of English folk dance. It is based on rhythmic stepping and the execution of choreographed figures by a group of dancers.

There are English records mentioning the morris dance dating back to 1448, though dances with similar names and some similar features are mentioned in Renaissance documents in France, Italy, and Spain. The origins of the term are uncertain, but one of the most widely accepted theories is that the term was "moorish dance" and "Moresco" (in Spain), which eventually became "morris dance".

In the nineteenth century, morris was danced mainly by men, but today there are male, female and mixed sides dancing in all styles.

History in England

Before the English Civil War, the working peasantry often took part in Morris dances, especially at Whitsun. In 1600 the Shakespearean actor William Kempe famously morris danced from London to Norwich, an event chronicled in his Nine Days Wonder (1600).

Morris dancing continued in popularity until the industrial revolution and its accompanying drastic social change. not until about a decade later, however, did he begin collecting the dances, spurred and at first assisted by Mary Neal, a founder of the Esperance Club (a dressmaking cooperative and club for young working women in London), and Herbert MacIlwaine, musical director of the Esperance Club. Neal was looking for dances for her girls to perform, and so the first revival performance was by young women in London.

In the first few decades of the 20th century, several new men's sides were formed, and in 1934 the Morris Ring was founded by six revival sides. In the 1960s and especially the 1970s, there was an explosion of new dance teams, many of them women's or mixed sides. At the time, there was often heated debate over the propriety and even legitimacy of women dancing the morris.

Partly because women's and mixed sides were (and still are) not eligible for full membership of the Morris Ring, two other national (and international) bodies were formed, the Morris Federation and Open Morris.

Styles

Today, there are three predominant styles of morris dancing, and different dances or traditions within each style named after their region of origin. Clogs are a characteristic feature of this style of dance. Border Morris from the English-Welsh border: a simpler, looser, more vigorous style, normally danced with blackened faces (or sometimes otherwise coloured, given the negative connotations for some of blackface). Other dances listed by Bacon include border morris dances from Brimfield, Bromsberrow Heath, Evesham, Leominster, Much Wenlock, Pershore, Upton-on-Severn, Upton Snodsbury, and White Ladies Aston, and miscellaneous non-Cotswold, non-border dances from Steeple Claydon and Winster. In fact, for many of the "collected" traditions in Bacon, only sketchy information is available about the way they were danced in the nineteenth century, and they have been reconstructed to a degree that makes them largely twentieth century inventions as well. an example would be Adderbury, danced very differently by the Adderbury Morris Men and the Adderbury Village Morris. There is a picture of Eccles Wakes (painted in the 1820s, judging by the style of dress of some of the participants and spectators) that clearly shows both male and female dancers.

The dancers always wore clogs and were often associated with rushcarts at the local wakes or holidays. The dances themselves were often called 'maze' or 'garland dances' as they involved a very intricate set of movements in which the dances wove in and out of each other. Some dances were performed with a wicker hoop (decorated with garlands of flowers) held above the dancer's head. Some dancers were also associated with a tradition of mumming, holding a pace egging play in their area.

Mention should be made of the Britannia Coco-nut Dancers, named after a mill not far from Bacup. It is said that the dance found its way to the area through Cornishmen who migrated to work in the Rossendale quarries. (You can see a Bolton troup in a pre-war documentary by Humphrey Jennings) They later evolved into 'pom pom' dancers (still called 'morris dancers' by older people). During the folk revival in the 1960s, many of the old steps to dances such as 'Stubbins Lane Garland' were often passed on by old ladies in their seventies. Cawte in a 1963 article on the morris dance traditions of Herefordshire, Shropshire, and Worcestershire -- counties along the border with Wales. small numbers of dances in the team repertoire, often only one and rarely more than two; highly variable number of dancers in the set and configurations of the set (some sides had different versions of a dance for different numbers of dancers); and an emphasis on stick dances almost to the exclusion of hankie dances. While performances at various times of the year are recorded, the most common dancing occasion was Boxing Day.

Many dances were collected, by Cecil Sharp and later collectors, and several were included in Bacon's book, but border morris was largely neglected by revival morris sides until late in the twentieth century. Silurian has emphasized re-creation of the traditional border dances, while the Shropshire Bedlams have created a new repertoire of what some call "neo-border" dances, tending to be more complex and theatrical than the collected dances.

Sword dancing

Sometimes regarded as a type of morris, although by many of the performers themselves as a traditional dance form in its own right, is the sword dance tradition, which includes both rapper sword and longsword traditions.

Mumming

The English mummers play occasionally involves morris or sword dances either incorporated as part of the play or performed at the same event.

Other traditions

Other forms include Molly dance from Cambridgeshire. Molly dance, which is associated with Plough Monday, is a parodic form danced in work boots and with at least one Molly man dressed as a woman.

There is also hoodening which comes from East Kent, and the Abbots Bromley Horn Dance.

Cotswold and sword dancers are most often accompanied by a single player, but Northwest and Border sides often have a band, usually including a drum.

For Cotswold and (to a degree) Border dances, the tunes are traditional and specific: the name of the dance is often actually the name of the tune, and dances of the same name from different traditions will have slightly different tunes. For Northwest and sword dancing there is less often a specific tune for a dance: the players may use several tunes, and will often change tunes during a dance.

Terminology

Like many activities, morris dancing has a range of words and phrases that it uses in special ways.

Many participants will refer to the world of morris dancing as a whole as the morris. (Despite the competitive connotation of both words, morris dancing is hardly ever competitive).

A set (which can also be referred to as a side) is a number of dancers in a particular arrangement for a dance. Most Cotswold morris dances are danced in a rectangular set of six dancers, and most Northwest dances in a rectangular set of eight;

A jig in morris dancing is a dance performed by one (or sometimes two) dancers, rather than by a set. Its music does not usually have the rhythm implied by the word jig in contexts outside morris dancing. On some sides the squire is the leader of the side, who will speak for the side in public, will usually lead or call the dances, and will often decide the programme for a performance. On other sides the squire is more of an administrator, with the foreman taking more of a leadership role, and with dances being called by any experienced dancer. The foreman is the person who teaches and trains the dancers, and is responsible for the style and standard of the side's dancing. Often the fool will dance around and even through a dance without appearing to really be a part of it, but it usually takes an unusually talented dancer to pull off such fooling while actually adding to and not distracting from the main dance set.

A tradition in Cotswold morris is a collection of dances which come from a particular area, and have something in common: usually the particular steps, the arm movements, and the figures danced.

Most Cotswold dances alternate common figures (or just figures) with a distinctive figure (or chorus). The common figures are common to all (or some) dances in the tradition; the distinctive figure distinguishes that dance from other dances in the tradition. Sometimes, (particularly in corner dances) the chorus is not identical each time it comes in a dance, but has its own sequence of forms specific to the tradition; nevertheless something about the way the chorus is danced will distinguish that dance from other dances. Frequently several traditions will have essentially the same dance, where the name, tune, and distinctive figure are the same or similar, but each tradition uses its own common figures and style of dancing.

In England, an ale is a private party where a number of morris sides get together and perform dances for their own enjoyment rather than as a performance for an audience. Occasionally an evening ale will be combined with a day or weekend of dance, where all the invited sides will tour the local area and perform their dances for the public. In North America the term is widely used to describe a full weekend of dancing involving public performances and sometimes workshops. Morris dancers were often employed at such events.