About Morris Dancing

What's Going On Here?
It's 5:45 a.m., and the air is chilly. There's just enough light so you can see the fog rising through the trees. A small group of bleary-eyed people have gathered in the park, some warming their hands around cups of coffee. They speak softly in the quiet of this "almost daybreak", and smile in anticipation.

Fiddle and Pipe, Bells and Ribbons
Then, just as a speck of light appears on the horizon, the sounds of a fiddle and pipe playing some ancient tune cuts through the air. Suddenly scores of tiny bells are ringing, ribbons are fluttering in the wind, and a dozen white handkerchiefs catch the first rays of sunlight.

It's May Day, and the Morris dancers have come to dance the sun up, and welcome in the spring. It is a ritual they have followed for at least the last 400 years, maybe longer.  Many of the traditions of today's Morris would be quite familiar to the people of Shakespeare's day.

Kerchiefs and Sticks
But Morris is not confined to May Day. Intrepid Morris dancers can be found year round practicing their wild and exuberant movements.

Some dances use large white handkerchiefs, which the performers wave and twirl, and which can give the team the appearance of a small galleon in full sail.

Other dances feature sticks which the dancers swing about and strike together, adding percussion to the music. This striking of the sticks is done in complex and precise patterns, and occasionally causes audiences to wince when it becomes especially fast and furious.

Morris Steps
The real heart of Morris is in its elaborate steps. Most obvious is the caper (the word comes from the latin for goat!) which is a leap straight up into the air, and is done in many variations.  There are also dozens of other prescribed/traditional steps - turning steps, jumps, and hops, moving forward, backward, and sidewise, that must be done in elaborate figures.

Morris Teams
Morris Dance is from England, and many of the villages there have their own teams, each with their own particular traditions and ways of dancing. Likewise, each village team dresses in a distinctive fashion. Though the wearing of bells on the shins is practiced by most teams in the central counties, a wide variety of colorful outfits are worn.