Mixed Morris
There are some who would argue that Morris Dancing is traditionally danced by men alone. Although this may be at least partially correct historically, it is also partially incorrect historically. To understand this, you need to know about Mary Neal and Cecil Sharp.
CECIL SHARP
Cecil Sharp was a Victorian gent who made it his business to write down all the Cotswold Morris dances and folk tunes of England at that time. This he did, by travelling extensively, talking to locals and noting music and dances carefully. We no doubt owe a great debt to his endeavours that some lovely tunes and dances have been preserved. It is a matter of debate amongst those interested as to whether or not we should use his notes as guidelines, or gospel. As the dancers were many and various in age and ability, it is possible that dances were noted according to the infirmities of the performers and some of the strange maneuvers now preserved are actually careful recreations of the laboured efforts of rickety or bow-legged old men in remote country villages on the day that Cecil happened to be passing through.Cecil himself concentrated on Cotswold dances and ignored Border Morris and other traditions on the basis that they were primitive and not worthy of recording for posterity. Although this means that there is more doubt about the dances authenticity, it also means that these traditions have inherited a greater freedom from the constraints of the morris canon and are able to be adapted and developed by the performers of today.
MARY NEAL
This period of English cultural history is better known historically through the work of Mary Neal’s one-time collaborator, the song collector, Cecil Sharp after a bitter dispute developed between them over participation in the revival and ways in which the dance could be taught and carried on. Identified by Mary as perennial debate between inclusivity and exclusivity, tradition and mod
ernity, the debate centred on questions of authenticity.
ernity, the debate centred on questions of authenticity.Whilst Sharp wished to establish an exact canon for England’s traditional songs and dances, Neal believed dancers embraced dance intuitively and handed down from parent to child, no two dances could ever be precisely the same. Their ‘great debate’ became a classic struggle between form and content, spirit and technique. Like peeling an onion to get to the core of a matter, the nub of the dispute, seemed to hang at one point on whether one particular dancer, William Kimber from Headington Oxford, danced with a straight or a bent knee.
