Menu - Previous Talk - Next Talk

…whole school of thought in the revival, I use the word revival which I dislike using because to me the revival happened some time ago. We exist now, Morris exists, it doesn't have to be revived it exists everywhere throughout the British Isles, even in Ireland there are Morris sides, so it exists. It even exists in Holland, in Australia in the USA and Canada, it's world-wide, even Dubai, and Hong Kong, and on the way to the Antarctic. This is a strange side based on the fact that the people going down to Antarctica have nothing to do going out so the bloke in charge runs a Morris side on the helicopter flight deck on the way down, and they've actually danced in the Falklands, in S. Africa and the Argentine but they are so busy coming back, writing up and so on that it doesn't dance coming back, it doesn't exist. So it's a way of moving Morris dancers down to the Antarctic... you all thought they were penguins.

A lot of rubbish is talked about 'the tradition' and how the tradition goes on, how people learn. What I've got to say is that if you've got an established tradition, if your side has been going so long that you have a nice age structure up to say fifty year olds or so who've danced for a long time and there are clubs now who started in the twenties or thirties who have this long continuity, you can learn very easily because there's a lot of experienced, proficient dancers around to copy.

The traditional process of he dances and you mimic until you get it right can work. Now unfortunately for this lovely image all the traditional sides we know of, the four that are alive now and those that died this century, that's Eynsham, Illmington, Bideford, they all had a foreman who taught, who taught beginners and everyone who collected that we've ever talked to found that the foreman was very fussy about fundamentals. They were very aware of the basic movements that you had to learn and they drilled people until they got what they wanted.

Arnold Woodley at Bampton, he gets the youngsters together and he makes them hop and then when they can do that to the music and only then does he let them kick their foot forward. He builds it up on fundamentals, when they can do that he'll start putting hand movements in. Before he lets them make a set they work hard on the basics, and are prepared at practices to go back time and time again until they' re satisfied that everybody has got the right idea. Though of course traditional sides when you see them may have tried to make up six, they may have somebody who hasn't really got it and is struggling, we all have that problem, we all know it's undesirable and that the tradition is no better than we are.

I want to emphasise that the traditional process only worked in the revival because there were a lot of good dancers around to copy and the traditional sides themselves where they had instruction which was usual, they spent a lot off time teaching people basics, you didn't pick it up as you went along. They did, although they wouldn't fuss in public, they did at the next practice take people apart who didn't dance well. Now I've known Bampton men since 1956 or so and we do know they are very fussy and we do know that they've had some extremely stupid people... Morris stupid not mentally stupid, people who've had great difficulty in grasping movement.

Now, the normal Morris club and I assume that you lot here today are normal Morris clubs... you've got people here... all of you I trust because you want to dance. You've not come into it because there's nothing else to do of an evening... or... you are dancers, you still have basic skills to learn. Now, the problem with the enormous growth in the number of sides in recent years is that they are being taught by people with only three or four years experience, now quite honestly it takes ten years for somebody to learn to dance, then having learned to dance to relearn it all again to dance well, to learn about people, about managing a club and people and doing training and as I say the average person running a club has not got that background.

So you have the problem of actually discovering what the basics are, and this is why instead of as it were having a good dancer who breaks it down in an elementary way and teaches it bit by bit you've got to start learning the tricks of the trade. You've either got to have people who are going to be analytical about it which I try to be or have people who can write it down and say these are the things which really matter.

This is why I say to you things like some of the secrets of the step... first of all posture... your weight is forward on the balls of the feet, not on the heels. This is because historically the Morris comes from the period 1600-1700 in terms of the social style of the dance, they danced forward, they didn't have heels on their shoes to speak of like people here today so there was nothing odd about it. They didn't go round in heels which in a sense throw the weight back putting you at a disadvantage when you start to dance Even men' s heels are high compared with... they've grown high over the years and give you a nice posture in the static sense but are not good for dancing. It started in a period when people turned their feet out, heavens knows why people turned their feet out but the cavaliers exploited it because when you turn you feet out your knees go out as well and hence you can have big boots with flowery bits. If you've ever seen the Sealed Knot have a battle, half of them wear big boots. Where we live the Sealed Knot started coming to all the barn dances in kit. We had one a fortnight ago with a chap who would insist on wearing spurs, it's all very well swinging and so on but.... aaaaaaarhhg.

It appeared when feet were turned out and dancing with feet turned out has only dropped since English ballroom dancing started in the twenties but it does give a good point of balance for moving in all directions. From a Morris point of view, some of the basic movements like 'rear-up' in Brackley or shuffles in various traditions you require to have the balls of the feet far enough apart to be able to do the movement, so if you're doing shuffles you turn.........................(demo).......... so there's a good practical reason for this old fashioned way of doing it. I hope people will remember, if I tell them why, they remember.

That’s the other reason, as I say, good posture, good balance, really comes from..........(demo)........., nothing's worse than seeing wobbly people... or wobbly bits of people... there's nothing worse than a fat Morris dancer... these are the things as I said about the jumps... the pushing off, the landing very lightly is the way, it gives you good balance and it looks good.

In fact, good movement has nothing to do with ????? weather, it's Morris or anything else... you can pick up good tips by watching Come Dancing on the Tele in fact I collected a Bacup dance from watching Come Dancing one night... Bacup for years have only done half the dance but for Come Dancing they worked up the other half which they didn't normally do... and as I sat watching I thought I haven't seen that bit before.

So, I think you can learn from anybody - particularly about dance fitness, even such things as exercises or stretching, something I keep trying to say to people... a typical Morris side in this country thinks there's something a little bit odd about warming up for Morris so they turn up in their kit and line up in front of the public and do their first dance. They are a bit stiff so they dance a bit restrained, so they get into this weak way of dancing. By the time they're warmed up after a dance or two they've actually got into the habit of dancing a bit tight for the rest of the show or for the rest of the day for that matter. Now if they're conscious that when you start you're a bit tender, a bit careful that you’re not going to sprain or strain you can probably get away with it if you say the first few dances are a write-off, then you say perhaps we should meet somewhere else. Or you get into exercises like some of these foreign teams, make sure you stretch the muscles just so that once you get onto dance area and the music starts you can go straight in without breaking or twisting your ankle. Now that's a serious risk in other sports and activities, if you were a top class tennis player you wouldn't dream of doing any physical activity without being prepared for it. Ballet dancers warm first and cool down afterwards, we all know how stiff and tired you can become because you haven't done anything to cool down and relax consciously.

To me, all these things are common sense particularly now that you're not a parochial bunch doing something in your village for people who know you and everybody thinks it's funny when you re all stiff at the end of it but you're an entertainment in a world that sees and expects professional standards of dancing.

The Morris's advantage is that it's there, it's not in a little box, it's real and it's live... it's street theatre... you're a show that the crowd participates in, that's the only thing that you've got over other entertainments. They're not just dummies being amused, you can talk to them, you can make them smile and they react to what you do.

Standards is what I'm talking about, how do you dance well? Never be afraid to seek advice, if you see a side dancing well, ask them why. It's great of course because they don't usually know and that puts you one up to start with. Don't be afraid to talk to a sports coach particularly one who's had training in movement. At practices in the end, you must practice what you're going to do outside, you can't go outside and do a performance that you didn't actually rehearse. You think you can pull all the bit's together, the dance , the characters, the fooling, the announcements and do it spontaneously. You do the announcement spontaneously because you want it to be unique every time.

The worst side I ever saw was Albion who rehearsed the jokes. At every ring meeting with them every dance had it's gimmick. It was bloody good the first time but the third time we all said 'I don't want to watch that again'... they over organised the show, so you have to be careful. The worst thing that sides do is marching on and off... well they don't, most people... four of you stand up and say 'hey Bill' and having got Bill say 'we had thirteen when we started', that sort of thing makes a terrible impression on the audience, terrible impression on yourself for that matter, there's nothing like going out feeling reasonably organised, feeling everybody's with you and you put on a performance that people say 'I not only enjoyed that' but 'will you come back again'. I do like to emphasise that.

To come back to practice, if you practice sloppily, if you practice in a small room you're going to dance in small space when you're feeling tired. When you are thinking about what you're doing the first dance, no doubt is perfect, but after you've done a bit, you relax and you fall back into the habits of the practice room If you dance weakly then that's how it goes, little jumps here little stick tappings there. If you watch Bampton they always dance energetically because they haven't learnt any other way of doing it. If you practice sloppily you've learnt another one... an easier one to do, so in practice you've got to get on, dance, get off, leave gaps for announcing, you've got to give the clown a chance while you dance as well.

The other thing is when you practice if when you stop someone says 'YOU BLOODY FOOL I....' you'll do it outside, we've seen so many sides have their post-mortem in front of everybody. Or people loose their temper... can you imagine some thing so minor as Morris getting so serious that people actually loose their temper over it...........

Morris is good enough that professional people like myself can commit themselves to talking, teaching and so on every second that's available, completely dedicated to Morris and yet it is not a serious activity.

If you take it seriously you end up like they did at Abingdon. In Abingdon there are two sides, there was the Hemmings family who for years and years were The Morris, the Hemmings family were dancers, they got a side going, they were the Mayors of Ock street right up to 1965,1966. Then someone else was elected mayor and they drifted away from the Hemmings family. Last year the current side said 'we're going to give the regalia to a museum'. The Hemmings family said 'Oh, no you're not...its ours'. Both groups started getting uptight with each other so the official dancers kicked out all the Hemmings family members out of their club and they had no choice but to go and form a side of their own. So, this lot said 'you can't do our traditional dances' we can do our family dances... and off they went although they both had exactly the same objective and that is to do the Morris, to preserve the custom, the purity, to look after the regalia and to present the Abingdon Ock street Morris to the world at large as something worth doing. Yet they got themselves terribly screwed up over something which nowadays is a relaxation, an entertainment. The last thing I heard was that they'd served an injunction on the Mayor of Abingdon to stop him receiving stolen property. You can't take the Morris that seriously no matter how old your traditional custom is and theirs goes back to 1540. You can't take it seriously but you can dedicate yourself to the pursuit of excellence.

Back To Top