Events

Workshops at 2 levels on 2 consecutive weeks, 13th & 20th February.  Appalachian clogging basics taught by Abby Ladin and Sam Bartlett from the USA.  Abby teaches the dancing, and Sam provides accompaniment on 5-string banjo. Level 1: The fundamental steps, how to string them together and keep a rhythmic pulse. Level 2: Build on the basics, add more steps to our repertoire, work on musicality and tone, improvise and trade rhythms. These workshops are being jointly hosted with the North American Morris Dance Organization (NAMDO). Click on the link below to book a place and you will be sent a Zoom link to access the event.

Ray & Bev Langton with Graydon Radford from Shrewsbury Morris will outline the journey the Shrewsbury Morris Twitter account has taken to reach 101k +Twitter followers. They will outline the rationale, top tips, issues, awards and other things they have encountered along with how the use of social media has embedded the presence of Shrewsbury Morris into the town of Shrewsbury and the benefits it has bought to the team. There is no silver bullet to working with social media but it is hoped that this afternoon will make others think about how social media can be used to raise the profile of any morris side. Click on the link below to book a place and you will be sent a Zoom link to access the event.

Andrew Knight and Lin Steel, with musician Tony Warren, will teach a Cotswold morris jig (solo dance) for those with some experience of Cotswold morris, also suitable for those who attended our beginners Cotswold workshop in November/December.  The dance is 'Lumps of Plum Pudding' in the style of Bledington.  Click on the link below to book a place and you will be sent a Zoom link to access the event.

Morris Music - a History - or "Whatever did the old dead guys ever do for us?" A talk by Stephen Rowley on the history of morris music, followed by a discussion chaired by Andy Richards including how to obtain tabor pipes for anyone wanting to learn. Click on the link below to book a place and you will be sent a Zoom link to access the event.

Keith Leech will talk about the history of Sussex Bonfires and why they are so big in the county compared with elsewhere. There will be time for Q&A. Keith is a Founder of the Hastings Borough Bonfire Society and a member of the Sussex Bonfire Council. Click on the link below to book a place and you will be sent a Zoom link to access the event.

Michael Jackson will briefly cover the history of clog making in Britain.  He will consider European influences on British clogs, and vice versa, as well as comments of wooden footwear around the world. Heritage clogs and wooden shoes, and clog-making tools, will be used to illustrate the talk, plus photographs and other old pictures. Click on the link below to book a place and you will be sent a Zoom link to access the event.

2 consecutive workshops on 7th & 14th March. Melanie Barber will teach the Whitby Toesday Waltz for Intermediates, comprising of ten steps, which she wrote for the Whitby Folk Week Community Facebook Group in 2016.  As it's an intermediate workshop, participants should have a good basic knowledge of clog techniques such as shuffles, swanees and crunches. A series of two 1.5 hour teaching sessions (over Zoom) to build to the performance of a clog stepping routine. Click on the link below to book a place and you will be sent a Zoom link to access the event.

Beginners Pipe & Tabor Workshop (Shepherds' Hey Bucknell) with Andy Richards. Pipe and tabor is a super and fun instrument for dance, just as it was in the earliest morris we know about in the 15th and 16th centuries, or in the 17th century when we get the earliest reference to a Cotswold morris tradition. Click on the link below to book a place and you will be sent a Zoom link to access the event.