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 | Yorkshire Times A Voice of the Free Press |
1:00 AM 29th April 2023
lifestyle
A Record 1,500 Morris Dancers Prepare To Welcome Dawn On May Day
Image by imordaf from Pixabay
Teams of dancers from Penzance in the south to Dunbar in Scotland will be ironing hankies, donning bells and making their way to local beauty spots, such as the tops of hills, cathedral forecourts and village greens, to greet what is traditionally seen as the start of summer.
This age-old custom, stretching back to the 15th Century when May Day revelry was second only to Christmas in the English year, is as popular and well-attended as ever, according to a listing of events produced by folk website, Tradfolk.
The website has collected details of a record number of morris performances taking place across the country and around the world to welcome the warmer months. Altogether there are likely to be over 150 different morris dance sides and over 1,500 individual dancers taking part in the traditional ritual this year at individual events and festivals alike.
Many events will see single teams of dancers perform at locally-significant landmarks, such as Lord Conyer’s Morris Men, who dance at a Trysting tree in South Yorkshire connected to the legend of Robin Hood, and Forest of Dean Morris, who climb the appropriately-named May Hill on the border of Gloucestershire and Herefordshire to see in the dawn.
Responsibility for ensuring the sun rises in Scotland goes to Glasgow-based Border Reivers Morris, who will be dancing the sun down on the west coast at Barassie beach in Ayrshire on 30th April, before making a dash across the country to dance the sun up on 1st May at Ravensheugh Sands near Dunbar. In Wales, Sweyn’s Ey Morris will be welcoming dawn at King Arthur’s Stone, a 25-ton capstone that sits majestically on top of Cefyn Bryn Common at the heart of the Gower Peninsula.
Overseas, there will also be performances by morris teams in Australia, New Zealand, America and Canada. The honour of seeing in the first May dawn of 2023 will go to Jack Frost Morris, who will dance on Signal Hill, Dunedin, New Zealand, while the last dawn of May Day 2023 will be seen in by the Vancouver Morris Men and Apple Tree Morris of San Francisco (GMT-7).
Other performances will see dozens of teams take part in organised events which have fallen on the 1st May for the first time in several years, such as the Rochester Sweeps Festival, Hastings Jack in the Green and Upton Folk Festival.
Tradfolk morris editor, James Merryclough, said:
“It feels like the popularity of morris, and our wider folk customs, is continuing to grow - as shown by Boss Morris’ recent performance at the Brit Awards. Morris is unfortunately often seen as a bit of a national embarrassment in a way that folk dance isn’t in other countries.
"But its history has often been deeply connected with social and cultural movements and I think people are coming back to these traditions and finding that they are not stale and old-fashioned, but vibrant, fun and engaging. May Day is a particularly magical time, when the cold dark days of winter are behind us and the warm, long summer days are on their way.
“Since launching Tradfolk in 2021 we’ve seen continued growth in our readership, with articles about morris dancing being particularly popular. Our 2023 Wassailing directory saw over 6,000 site visitors, and traffic for this year’s May Day morris directory is up 171% from the same period in 2022. Perhaps most tellingly, nearly 40% of our visitors are between 25 and 44 years old, which shows that the folk scene is likely to go from strength to strength.”
“It feels like the popularity of morris, and our wider folk customs, is continuing to grow - as shown by Boss Morris’ recent performance at the Brit Awards. Morris is unfortunately often seen as a bit of a national embarrassment in a way that folk dance isn’t in other countries.
"But its history has often been deeply connected with social and cultural movements and I think people are coming back to these traditions and finding that they are not stale and old-fashioned, but vibrant, fun and engaging. May Day is a particularly magical time, when the cold dark days of winter are behind us and the warm, long summer days are on their way.
“Since launching Tradfolk in 2021 we’ve seen continued growth in our readership, with articles about morris dancing being particularly popular. Our 2023 Wassailing directory saw over 6,000 site visitors, and traffic for this year’s May Day morris directory is up 171% from the same period in 2022. Perhaps most tellingly, nearly 40% of our visitors are between 25 and 44 years old, which shows that the folk scene is likely to go from strength to strength.”
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