The morris is recognised by the public as something essentially English, but in Britain it is a living form, not exhibited as a cultural museum, as are older dances so often seen displayed by troupes from Europe. As one of the performing arts it is ephemeral, needing to be constantly recreated to exist.
Roy Dommett’s Workshops and the Advanced Cotswold Weekends 1986-2014
A single source for notes, videos etc from some of the many workshops and weekend instructionals we have run over the years.
If you have video, audio or written notation from an MF instructional, especially those run by Roy Dommett, we would love to have copies for this site please! Contact notation–at–morrisfed.org.uk.
Workshops/”instructionals” by year
With exception of How Hill 1986, Unknown 1987, Sparkford 1996, and Hawley 2014, most of these videos were filmed by simply plonking a camera down in the corner of the room. Accordingly the sound quality is often appalling and the video may fail to capture essential action. Nonetheless, these are important historical records that can still play today the role they were intended to play all those years ago: to stimulate thought and provide inspiration to dancers and their teams.
- How Hill, 1986 (filmed and edited by Robin James)
- Location unknown, 1987 (filmed and edited by Robin James)
- Patcham, 1989
- Leicester 1992
- Wantage 1994
- Church Crookham, 1994 (stave and garland dances, part 2 only)
- Hawley(?) 1995
- Wantage, 1995
- Sparkford 1996 (stave and garland dances)
- Hawley(?) 1997
- Wantage 1997
- Wantage, 1998
- Wantage 2002
- Wantage 2003
(These weekends were not the work of any one person but we would like to thank Tony Forster and then Beth Neill, in particular, for making so many of them happen, especially in the later years.)
Talks by Roy Dommett:
- Morris and Mummers [the history of the Morris] (2013): Part 1, Part 2, Part 3.
- Morris, [my] life and times (2012): the full talk (with slides), a summary (from 2013), the slides used in the summary (sorry they aren’t synchronised – any volunteers?)
- Two impromptu talks given at Hawley (2014) on the history of Morris in the early 20th century: early 20th century, Friendly Societies and stave dancing.
