Morris dancing is a generic name for a number of types of traditional English dance forms. Although it is primarily used to describe Cotswold style dances, Morris also includes sword dances (primarily from the northern regions of England) and Border dances (from the Welsh-English border). Each of these dance forms have been and continue to be of a ritual rather than social nature, and have existed in one form or another for five centuries or more. Today they are danced by teams throughout the world, although primarily in England and the US. Minnesota is home to a number of ritual performance teams including 4 Cotswold teams (or 'sides' as they are called). They include MTM: Minnesota Traditional Morris (a men's side), the Bells of the North (a women's side), Ramsey's Braggarts (a men's side), and Uptown-on-Calhoun (a mixed [which is not to say confused] gender side).
Several ritual sword-dance teams also exist. They are Vorpal Sword (an English Rapper-sword side), Short Sword (also Rapper), the Asworded Nuts (a longsword team), and Wild Rose (also longsword), and the newest rapper side Tangled Web. The Twin Cities of St. Paul and Minneapolis are also home to several ritual-drama teams which perform Mummer's (a winter-time English ritual play) and other seasonal plays. Finally, we now have our very own Northwest team: Blue Ox. Northwest is a cross between English clogging and processionals and can be found in (you guessed it) the Northwest corner of England.
You may be wondering where we get all of these dancers (I am kind of wondering that myself). The real trick here is reduce, re-use, recycle! Some have even suggested that it is bad form to be on only one team (fortunately that fool was absorbed into the collective morris consiousness -- kind of like the Borg!). It has also been suggested that there are really only 2 dancers in town (kind of like the old argument that there are only 2 Cotswold (thats in England, remember) morris dances: The Hankie dance, and The Stick dance. We of superior morris intellect realise that that argument doesn't hold water -- there are at least 3 dances if you include The Handclapping dance! The argument for only 2 dancers is a widley held rumor, however, it has been noticed that the recent roster did have in excess of 80 names on it, so we are guessing that they are indeed distinct individuals (as can be witnessed first hand at one of our buisness meetings!). Hope you enjoy these pages. If you find anything in error, good for you! I suppose you could send me an Email, and I might fix it, but dont hold your breath.
This Web document produced by Ted Hodapp (a member
of MTM and a few other teams)
of the Hamline University Physics Department
