Folk dancing, English; Folk music -- England -- History and criticism; Folk songs, English -- England -- History and criticism
That first evening’s Morris dancing was the beginning of many happy
hours of practice culminating in a demonstration of the dances and
songs at a Christmas party held in the rooms of the Passmore Edwards’
Settlement in 1905. The revival of the folk-dance, which was at
once realised as genuine by many who were there, resulted in a more
public performance in 1906, and from that date until the present day
a series of Concerts has been given in London and within a radius
of thirty miles around, and as far north as Yorkshire and south as
Sussex. Besides this, the dancers were almost at once invited to teach
the dances, and at the present time have taught in every county,
and in villages, towns, schools, clubs, factories, and educational
institutions from one end of England to the other. In 1909 the Board
of Education sanctioned the dances being used as part of the course of
physical exercises and organised play, but until after that sanction
the members of the Espérance Club were the only teachers who had
learnt their dances direct from the country dancers. The girls soon
taught their men friends, and to-day as well as the girls we have
several “Sides” of men who both teach and give displays of the dances.
Since the visit of the first two Headington men, I have had over twenty
dancers up to London, from Headington, Abingdon, Oddington, Yardley
Gobion, Northampton, Lancashire, Warwickshire, Yorkshire, and other
places, all of whom have contributed something to our direct knowledge
of the dances still to be found in the country; and with Mr Clive Carey
and others I have visited different centres of dancing with a view to
bringing the dancers to London to teach, collecting all I could about
old customs surviving around the dances and getting acquainted with
the dancers. I have also sent some of our club members to the country
with the same end in view. There is, therefore, at the present time a
very strong link between the traditional dancers in the country and
the young people in London who are busy practising and passing on the
dances, and there is no longer any fear now that the dances will die
out completely and be lost to the coming generations.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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