Recording of event
These workshops took place using the Zoom video service on 22 and 29 November and 6 December 2020. Recording of the events are available on YouTube:
- Cotswold Morris Beginners Workshop 1 of 3 – Ilmington 22 November
- Cotswold Morris Beginners Workshop 2 of 3 – Ilmington 29 November
- Cotswold Morris Beginners Workshop 3 of 3 – Ilmington 6 December
Three Workshops – Cotswold Morris for Beginners
3 consecutive workshops. Lin Steel and Andrew Knight, with musician Tony Warren, will teach a Cotswold morris jig (solo dance) over 3 weeks, for those with some dance experience but that may be new to Cotswold morris. The dance is ‘Jockey to the Fair’ in the style of Ilmington. They will cover warming up, Stepping, Choruses and Slows; building to the complete jig in the third week.
A series of 3 one hour teaching sessions (over Zoom) to build to the performing of the Ilmington Jig ‘Jockey to the Fair’. A “from the ground up” set of instructionals, each session will cover part of the Jig in some detail, reprise the previous session and allow time to practice the elements from one week to the next with an MP3, Music and Dance notation available. Pacing will be fast for beginners but slow for anyone with a measure of Cotswold experience. No Cotswold Morris experience is needed to join us for these sessions, but a desire to learn / better one’s technique / be able to learn from viewing on a screen is desirable. The dates are:
Sunday 22nd November (week 1) / Sunday 29th November (week 2) / Sunday 6th December (week 3)
Your hosts
Dance leaders – Lin Steel and Andrew Knight, with Musician Tony Warren. Lin has danced from early childhood and is a professional dance teacher with the RAD, her Morris history starts with Border and she made the transition to Cotswold on moving to Somerset, she has danced most genres of Morris. Andrew is an Osteopath and has danced Morris for 25+ years almost exclusively Cotswold; both have been teachers/fore(wo)men and leaders/squires of several teams and both dance with multiple teams. Andrew wrote the Warm up information 2nd edition for The Morris Federation.
Lin, Andrew and Tony currently perform with the Knights of King Ina morris jig team, based in Somerset (see more below).
To register
Please complete this online form: Register for the Workshops – Cotswold morris for beginners; you will receive a confirmation email immediately (check your spam/junk/promotions folder!). We will send you a Zoom link a couple of days before the event. Open to all – you don’t have to be a member of a team in The Morris Federation.
Optional Donations
Donations to Yeovil Freewheelers Blood Bikes: https://www.yfwbloodbikes.org/
Resources
Here are some resources for you:
– Video: Andrew Knight dancing Ilmington – Jockie to the Fair on the King Ina YouTube Channel
– Video: Warming up and Cooling Down for Morris Dancers on the Morris Federation’s YouTube Channel
– A folder containing: Dance Notation, music dots and MP3 in the Morris Federation’s Notation Library
Knights of King Ina
See the KOKI Facebook page: https://www.facebook.com/TheKnightsOfKingIna.
KOKI – back in 2010 faced with the imminent demise (never happened) of a set team, several people joined to study Jig dancing as a way of improving their dance and to avoid being reliant on large numbers to go to Festivals. That and there are not many Jig teams about – at the time we found 2 active and 2 inactive in the UK and another also just starting out like us.
At the outset we decided to avoid the inevitable provenance arguments about how its supposed to go and to revisit the – usually handwritten – first collection notes. Our re-interpretation of these is the same starting point that all the revivalists had (apart from those meeting the old dancers) any subsequent variation from first recorded is to suit the dance to us.
Over the years from humble beginnings we have performed at many festivals, won medals, and given a workshop series twice a year in Somerset covering most of the traditions that have Jig dances in their repertoire. There is a notation series and music for all of these available free from us. We now have regular members from the South Coast to Herefordshire and meet regularly to practice (subject to legal restrictions!), members of the team have taught and performed in Europe and Australia and during Lockdown we developed a video set and notation for Ilmington teaching used internationally.
