Folk dancing, English; Folk music -- England -- History and criticism; Folk songs, English -- England -- History and criticism
At first all we had to depend on when teaching the dance was the
memory of our working girls who had first learnt the dances, and
the manuscript of the music which Mr Sharp had taken down from the
men who taught us. Thus it became necessary to make the record more
permanent and to leave some guide to the dances with those whom we
taught. Mr Sharp and Mr MacIlwaine, with the help of Miss Florence
Warren, who danced again and again while the actual steps were being
recorded, then published a book of tunes and instructions for the
dances, and these have been followed by three more sets of the dances.
Mr John Graham published two volumes very shortly after, and Mr Clive
Carey, Mr Geoffrey Toye, and I followed with two volumes of tunes and
instructions. We are all still engaged both in searching for dances,
teaching them, and recording them for future use, and though probably
the best and most characteristic dances are now duly recorded, still
one is never sure where the work is really ended, and we shall always
be glad to hear from any readers of fresh dances, which we shall be
glad to investigate and, if genuine, record for future use.
In 1907 Mr Cecil Sharp and I disagreed over the constitution of a
committee, and from that date have worked on entirely separate lines. I
have kept very carefully to the traditional lines, making a great point
of having those whom I send out to teach taught by country dancers
without the intervention of professional dance instructors, so that
to-day, after eight years’ practice, I believe they are dancing as much
like the original dancers as is possible.
After the recognition of the traditional dances by the Board of
Education, Mr Sharp started a school of teachers at the London
South-Western Polytechnic, and the teachers sent out from there have
also taught in different parts of the country. As lately as 1911 these
young ladies from the Polytechnic have formed the nucleus of the
Folk-Dance Society, with Mr Sharp as Director, while the Espérance
Club, as the Espérance Guild of Morris Dancers, also continues its work.
In 1910 I organised a vacation School at Littlehampton in Sussex, when
sixty teachers from County Council Schools in different parts of the
country met to learn the folk-dances, and later that year I transferred
the School, with Miss Florence Warren and Mr Clive Carey as instructors
in dance and song, at the request of the Governors of the Memorial
Theatre at Stratford-on-Avon to that place, and about two hundred
availed themselves of the opportunity of learning the songs and dances.
At this point, owing to Mr Sharp’s criticism of our methods, it was
decided to hold a conference to discuss points of difference with
a view to making the work at Stratford-on-Avon both national and
permanent. In view of this conference, I resigned my position as
hon. secretary of the Folk-Dance School at Stratford-on-Avon. But no
conference was held, and Mr Sharp was appointed Director of the School.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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