f48 Dancing England
It’s a century since Cecil Sharp established the English Folk Dance Society in 1911. Derek Schofield looks back at the changing fates and fashions of folk dancing down the subsequent years.
T
here can’t be many people in England who have not come across English folk dancing. Perhaps you learned it at pri- mary school, or perhaps your
children’s school or a community organi- sation might have held a fund-raising barn dance. It’s increasingly popular to have a ceilidh as part of a couple’s wed- ding celebrations. Then there’s morris dancing – a familiar sight in the shopping centres and village greens of many towns and villages, and an activity that rarely requires explanation when it appears in the popular media.
But it was not always so. Go back just over a hundred years, and morris and sword dancing had virtually disappeared in all but a handful of, largely, industrial hotspots. Social folk dancing, too, was dis- appearing, though the distinction between ‘folk’ and ‘popular’ dance is a huge grey area, and perhaps a separate genre of ‘folk dances’ never really existed. Putting discussions about categories and definitions to one side, today there is a recognisable form called ‘English folk dance’, so what happened to bring about such a widespread interest in folk dance?
It is popularly thought that the man responsible for encouraging the English not to forget its folk dance traditions was Cecil Sharp, although at first he was only one part of the picture. On Boxing Day, 1899, Sharp saw the out-of-season Head- ington Quarry Morris Dancers performing to raise money during a hard winter, but apart from noting and orchestrating the tunes, Sharp, then a music teacher, did nothing more than store the memory of seeing the dancers in the back of his mind. In 1905, philanthropist Mary Neal, who was providing employment for London’s poor, working-class women and girls, had started using folk songs collected by Sharp as part of the after-work recreation for the women in her Esperance Club. Neal asked if there were any suitable folk dances to go alongside the songs. Sharp remembered the morris dancers, and their musician, William Kimber, was brought to London to teach the girls. The response was immedi- ate and led to some of the Esperance girls travelling round the country to teach the dances, with Sharp seeking out old dancers from other south Midlands communities so that he could notate the dances.
These two strong-willed people, Sharp and Neal, eventually fell out. Neal believed in a freer interpretation of the dances than Sharp, who was keen that the dance movements should be performed
exactly as the old traditional dancers had explained them. Sharp saw the dances as ‘artistic’ and the Esperance interpretations as a romp, whereas Neal regarded Sharp’s approach as pedantic.
The Esperance girls tended to wear ‘olde worlde’ costumes, complete with bonnets. If the family photograph of our editor’s great aunts, with sticks and ankle bells (see opposite), has been correctly dated as from the late 1890s, that is before the Esperance morris started, then similar costumes must have been used for other activities such as maypole dancing.
Sharp set out to extend the repertoire of the growing folk dance movement, with morris dances from Derbyshire, and long and short (rapper) sword dances from York- shire and the north east. He set up a School of Morris Dancing at Chelsea Polytechnic, organised vacation schools and persuaded the Board of Education to include the dances in the school curriculum.
The morris and sword dances that Sharp collected were historically danced by men, although at first men and women, boys and girls were learning them. But they were display, rather than social dances, and in 1909 Sharp extended the repertoire further with the publication of a book of traditional country dances. With his folk song collecting, Sharp had no time for the “tawdry ballads and strident street-songs” of the town – he was seeking to improve the musical life of the country through folk songs. Similarly with the dances – the polka, waltz and quadrille were, he said, “displacing the old-time country dances and jigs”. But instead of searching out further old-time country dances and jigs among the rural working population, in the same way that he was collecting folk songs and morris and sword dances, he turned to the published collec- tions of country dances dating back to 1651 which, in Sharp’s view, contained the “earliest, purest, and most characteristic forms” of the English country dance. These publications, and the dances, became known by the name of the publisher – Playford. Sharp, with little dance know - ledge, skilfully interpreted the brief nota- tions in the books and made them fit for revival performance.
As Europe slid towards the First World
War, Sharp’s views prevailed over Neal’s, and in 1911 he established the English Folk Dance Society (EFDS) to provide organisa- tional structure for the expanding nation- al folk dance revival, so this year marks the centenary of the Society’s foundation. Local branches were formed, and a nation-
al demonstration team of dancers set the standards for others to aspire to. The male morris dancers in the team included the composer George Butterworth, Perceval Lucas, Reginald Tiddy and George Wilkin- son (all killed in the war), as well as James Paterson, Claud Wright and Douglas Kennedy. The women included Maud and Helen Karpeles, Helen Kennedy (Douglas’s sister) and Marjorie ‘Sinner’ Sinclair. Dou- glas married Helen Karpeles, and he became Director of the EFDS after Sharp’s death in 1924.
The folk dance movement survived
both the War and Sharp’s death. The repertoire was, at first, set in aspic – the gospel according to Cecil Sharp. Kennedy was at first preoccupied with the fund- raising campaign for Sharp’s memorial – Cecil Sharp House, opened in 1930 – but in 1931 was taken aback at an international folk dance festival in Copenhagen when the English Playford dances were described as “little ballets”. It was then, Kennedy later wrote, that he realised how far they had strayed from tradition.
The Playford-dominated folk dances were learned in graded classes with accompaniment from a solo piano or vio- lin. Folk dance parties were really only available to people who had learned the dances in classes.
Changes took place slowly during the 1930s: traditional dances were collected by Maud Karpeles in Northumberland, the Lake District and Devon, and by Leta Dou- glas in Yorkshire, but attitudes and context were more difficult to alter. Younger dancers wanted to break out of the rigid ‘class’ system and have some fun! The inspiration for a more significant change came from America, where Kennedy expe- rienced square dancing with a small dance band and the previously-unknown (in Eng- land) dance caller, but before Kennedy could introduce these ideas to the English scene, the Second World War intervened.
Opposite, clockwise from top left: May- pole dancing, Bonchurch, Isle Of Wight circa 1900; country dance display on Sid- mouth Esplanade, 1961; Cecil Sharp (cen- tre) and his dancers, including George But- terworth, Maud and Helen Karpeles and Douglas Kennedy, Burford 1913; Annie & Elizabeth Stears and friend, Bonchurch !.O.W. late 1890s; Diamond Jubilee Festival Ball at Cecil Sharp House, 1961 – Lady in waiting, Nibs Matthews, HRH Princess Margaret, Geoff Rye; Nibs & Jean Matthews form a basket, date unknown.
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