Dancing on the Radio

Dancing the Morris, William Kemp 1600

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By David Rees

In the 1980s and ’90s I was a Morris dancer. Before I go any further, allow me to ward off any clichéd images that are no doubt flashing through your mind – understandably so. Those of starched white shirts, flapping hankies, jingly bells, brightly coloured accoutrements and dainty stepping, all the stock in trade of today’s stick-wielding practitioners. These tropes are more the work of Victorian interdict, in a reinforcement and blanket clampdown on the perceived pagan, ritualistic gyrations belonging to a kind of dance out of kilter with Puritan sensibilities. It was during this Cromwellian era that such performances were discouraged or banned by the Church, and subsequently by an Act of Parliament (1654).

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More recently, the sanitising and homogenising of folk culture in general began around the beginning of the twentieth century, through Cecil Sharp and cohorts. Sharp is a controversial figure. Following years of failure as a composer, his life changed after a chance encounter with the Headington Quarry Morris dancers. He asked for permission to notate some of their dances and thus began a lifelong career, collecting and collating traditional song and dance (thereby fossilising a living oral tradition).

Whereas there is no doubting his enthusiasm and commitment, this is weighed against his autocratic style. Accusations against him were of controlling behaviour, misogyny, appropriation and bowdlerisation. Many of the songs he collected were altered and rearranged, subsequently copyrighted with no recompense to the original source.

I owe my own dance performances to Ockington Morris, whose existence was due to the efforts of one man – Robert Harris. As a teenager Robert got involved with Farnborough Morris, a renegade group who paid little heed to conventional notation. This was his introduction to the tradition of Hampshire mumming (i.e. traditional, masked folk plays). When, later, he moved with his young family to Devon (this would be the 1970s), he determined to find or found a specifically West Country male dance parallel. He organised a mummers play in Hatherleigh, Devon, based on his previous experience, with the addition of choreographed dance moves to invigorate the action. Stimulated by the audience response, the dances were developed and took precedence over the play. Thus Ockington Morris began. Aided by what historical evidence was available, an intuitive, visceral approach formed the Ockington ethos. Dances were developed using rough-hewn cudgels, iron bars and even flaming torches. The costume consisted of tatters or streamers coloured to reflect the hues of Dartmoor. In contrast to the mannerisms usually associated with Morris, we were openly masculine.

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We performed in and around Dartmoor with occasional excursions further afield, including the Isles of Scilly and several journeys to the Celtic fringes of France. On one such sojourn in a combined twinning trip with the villagers of Hatherleigh, we visited Ballots, Mayenne. From this base we performed in the surrounding area and were well received. We were also invited by the local radio station (Radio Mayenne) to perform at their studio. A generous programme slot enabled time for an interview with Robert, interspersed with several dances – our rhythmic stepping and exhortations weaving within the music. On leaving the studio we were met by a listener, eager to follow us to our next engagement. So we had one fan at least!

Ockington Morris is no longer extant. The passage of time and diverging lives of its members led to the inevitable. However, the dance lives on!

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David Rees is an optimist, but values pragmatism too. He seeks through deed and thought to help create an egalitarian society. He is currently employed as a ‘simulated patient’, aiding the education of future medical professionals. He also entertains himself and others with comedy sketches and improvisation and a smattering of theatre and TV.