Girls’ Carnival Morris Dancing and Contemporary Folk Dance Scholarship

Wright, Lucy

doi:10.1080/0015587x.2016.1231486

Folklore

2017

DOI: 10.1080/0015587x.2016.1231486

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Girls’ Carnival Morris Dancing and Contemporary Folk Dance Scholarship

Lucy Wright

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Cited by 2 publications

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“…This differs from my use of "Northwest" to refer to the broad geographic region in which girls' morris dancing takes place. Buckland's research (1991), a short summary in Roy Dommett's Morris Notes (1986:3-7), and work by the author (Wright 2017), this performance practice is rarely addressed. It is occasionally referenced in regional histories of North West morris styles (e.g., Bentley 1959:65, 68;Buckland and Howison 1980:10-13; Boswell 1981Boswell , 1984Howison and Bentley 1960).…”

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Making Traditions: Girls’ Carnival Morris Dancing and Material Practice

Wright¹

2017

yearb. tradit. music

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Girls’ carnival morris dancing holds a curious status in the canon of English folk performance. On the one hand, this highly competitive team-formation dance operates at a fundamental remove from the conventional spaces and narratives of the two English folk revivals with which most morris dancing is associated (Wright 2017). More closely linked to the popular “town carnival movement” of the late-nineteenth and mid-twentieth centuries than to the contemporary folk scene, girls’ morris dancing is practised in sports halls and community centres, predominantly in the northwest of England and parts of North Wales, and is rarely seen in public. The dancers—almost exclusively girls and young women from working-class communities—compete as members of morris dancing troupes within regional and cross-regional carnival organizations. They do not straightforwardly identify as “folk” dancers.

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Making Traditions: Girls’ Carnival Morris Dancing and Material Practice

Wright¹

2017

yearb. tradit. music

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‘What a troupe family does’: Family as Transmission Narrative in the British Carnival Troupe Dancing Community

Wright

2019

Dance Research

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Troupe dancing, also known as ‘entertaining’, is a competitive formational dance performed by girls and women in the North of England and Wales. Demanding significant discipline and commitment to achieve the high levels of synchronisation expected for a successful routine, participants demonstrate a strong sense of community, frequently describing their teammates in terms that connote a familial relationship. Drawing on recent fieldwork with members of entertaining troupes in Staffordshire and Greater Manchester, this article outlines some of the ways in which the ‘troupe family’ is invoked at troupe dancing events, including End of Season Championships and Family Night celebrations, as well as the crucial role played by troupe families in providing a shared context for rites of passage associated with the life cycle, such as births, deaths and marriages. I suggest that appeals to the troupe family reflect the high status placed on familial identities in the working-class communities of which troupe dancing is a part. Further, I argue that the family constitutes a transmission narrative in contradistinction to the use of ‘tradition’ in the cognate English folk dance community. This article considers the implications of the family model, and its affordances in safeguarding carnival performance while embracing change and renewal.

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Girls’ Carnival Morris Dancing and Contemporary Folk Dance Scholarship

Cited by 2 publications

References 4 publications

Making Traditions: Girls’ Carnival Morris Dancing and Material Practice

Making Traditions: Girls’ Carnival Morris Dancing and Material Practice

‘What a troupe family does’: Family as Transmission Narrative in the British Carnival Troupe Dancing Community

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