Meet the new generation of Morris dancers

Women in pas­toral out­fits dance across the brow of a hill, flow­ers braid­ed in their hair. The sun ris­es behind the clouds as a crowd gath­ers in a nat­ur­al cir­cle. Birds sing, bells jin­gle. Fid­dlers play a jig in close har­mo­ny. The air is cold but the atmos­phere is warm at this qui­et­ly gid­dy cel­e­bra­tion of some­thing new.

It’s dawn on May 1^st and I’m watch­ing Mor­ris dancers in Glouces­ter­shire wel­come in the sum­mer. Although Mor­ris and May Day cel­e­bra­tions go way back – to at least the 1500s – it’s a rel­a­tive­ly new event for these per­form­ers, and one that up until now has been main­ly private.

But this year hun­dreds of peo­ple made their way across Rod­bor­ough Com­mon in the blueish half-light, care­ful­ly avoid­ing the nest­ing sky­larks and yel­low cowslips, to watch two sides – Boss Mor­ris and Mis­er­den Mor­ris – dance at dawn. The healthy crowd is a sign of grow­ing inter­est in sea­son­al cel­e­bra­tions, and with it a fresh curios­i­ty about the poten­tial of folk cul­ture to offer some­thing non-com­mer­cial, some­thing authen­tic and, who knows, maybe even some­thing spiritual.

These qual­i­ties are what drew me to the unusu­al world of Mor­ris danc­ing in 2016. I was intrigued by the age­ing dancers who gath­ered at coun­try pubs and free folk fes­ti­vals through­out the sum­mer, per­form­ing their ego-less gyps and half heys, capers and hook-legs, in embroi­dered waist­coats, hand-sewn skirts, top hats, white jeans, with bells, sticks, and han­kies, play­ing melodeons, hur­dy-gur­dies and tin whistles.

And I was puz­zled by how this whole­some pas­time was both quin­tes­sen­tial­ly Eng­lish and a stig­ma­tised sub­cul­ture, pro­vok­ing either mock­ery or a sur­pris­ing amount of ire. The more peo­ple told me they ​‘hat­ed’ Mor­ris danc­ing, the more I want­ed to pho­to­graph it.

His­tor­i­cal records show that Mor­ris arrived from Europe in the 1400s. An exot­ic, spec­tac­u­lar dance per­formed for the roy­al courts, it was adopt­ed by the parish church as enter­tain­ment and as part of May Day cel­e­bra­tions. With­in lit­tle more than half a cen­tu­ry, it had spread through­out England.

But as the Eliz­a­bethan era came to an end and Puri­tan­i­cal atti­tudes towards gen­er­al mer­ri­ment took hold, the Mor­ris was in dan­ger of dis­ap­pear­ing alto­geth­er by the mid-17^th cen­tu­ry. The Edwar­dian folk enthu­si­ast Cecil Sharp began his per­son­al mis­sion of ​‘sav­ing’ tra­di­tion­al cus­toms from the mists of time, pub­lish­ing thou­sands of coun­try songs and dances col­lect­ed from England’s rur­al populations.

Sharp’s notion that Mor­ris was relat­ed to ancient male fer­til­i­ty rites helped spread the false link with pagan­ism, which also cement­ed the idea that women should not get involved. It was­n’t until the 1970s that fem­i­nism and the lib­er­al folk move­ment revival helped diver­si­fy the cul­ture. Now there are 800 Mor­ris sides – sin­gle, mixed gen­der and LGBTQ – each with their own iden­ti­ty, tak­ing inspi­ra­tion from Mor­ris tra­di­tion, region­al her­itage, folk­lore, pagan­ism, the occult, rad­i­cal pol­i­tics, sea­son­al cus­toms and local craft.

Boss Mor­ris have been step­ping up a new sub-genre of ​‘prog’ Mor­ris since 2015. Their styl­ish, con­tem­po­rary out­fits and light-heart­ed cross-cul­tur­al ref­er­enc­ing have brought new audi­ences to the form. What’s not to love about a dance troupe that adopts a pick­led onion Mon­ster Munch as their spir­it animal?

Kate Mer­ry, who co-found­ed Boss Mor­ris and set up her own side in Corn­wall last year and says she is ​“over­whelmed” with the pos­si­bil­i­ties for cre­ative expres­sion. ​“I want­ed it to be pro­gres­sive and based around local Cor­nish his­to­ry,” she tells me. ​“Joan the Wad is an inspi­ra­tional Cor­nish woman. There’s some­thing quite pow­er­ful about her. I can remem­ber see­ing Mor­ris in Lon­don and think­ing, ​‘Am I too r&b for this?’, but then you go to all the nights and it’s the best thing ever. You get a real sense of com­mu­ni­ty. There’s no com­pe­ti­tion, every­one wants to sup­port each other.”

Oth­er sides are also bring­ing Mor­ris out of the past. John­ny B, Squire of Brix­ton Tat­ter­jacks, set up the side because he want­ed ​“to explore the nature of being Eng­lish, and find the pos­i­tives and good things despite the his­tor­i­cal bag­gage of Britain’s impe­r­i­al past.”

When I first meet Hug­inn and Muninn, a three-piece Mor­ris side from Lon­don, they are about to go on stage as part of a bat­tle of the bands at Camden’s leg­endary met­al pub, The Dev – but they’ve also played in met­al fetish clubs and see Mor­ris as a nat­ur­al pro­gres­sion from rock.

A fusion of Nordic folk, street the­atre and Welsh folk­lore, their act com­bines a hefty bor­der style Mor­ris, the Mari Lwyd tra­di­tion of taunt­ing peo­ple (in this case, the audi­ence) with a horse’s skull, and a lot of sweat. Musi­cian Richard Ball, who also plays in space rock band Lit­mus, says of their busker’s approach: ​“You’ve got to give peo­ple a rea­son to stop and watch because they’re not pay­ing. Punk and Mor­ris have a sim­i­lar ethos. There’s some­thing a bit out­sider to it.”

On a day out danc­ing around Lon­don, Ollie King of the Ham­mer­smith Mor­ris Men admits that Mor­ris can be insu­lar, and that con­tem­po­rary Mor­ris will need to adapt again. ​“See­ing where we fit and what we do in 21^st cen­tu­ry Lon­don is some­thing we have to be con­scious of,” he explains. ​“I feel like this is going to be the next thing in the Mor­ris world. Are we rel­e­vant? How do we make our­selves rel­e­vant? There’s a deep­er con­scious­ness to be part of.”

It’s becom­ing a tru­ism that, after Brex­it and the pan­dem­ic, the Eng­lish are look­ing for ways of dis­pelling iso­la­tion. Is folk, with its links to nature’s cycle, Eng­lish iden­ti­ty, and the land where peo­ple will go to find a sense of belonging? 

For Tom Mer­ry, the Fore­man of Mis­er­den Mor­ris who has been danc­ing since the 1960s, the beau­ty of folk is that ​“it was born and bred here.”

“It’s very easy to pick up and make your own because it’s home­made,” he explains. ​“It fits like a glove. It’s made for us so it’s got lots of echoes of all kinds of oth­er things – the poet­ry and the sea­sons and the Chris­t­ian fes­ti­vals. So if peo­ple are feel­ing root­less, it’s there for us to use.”

Jon Wilks, musi­cian and edi­tor of folk cul­ture site Trad Folk, has heard ​“mul­ti­ple reports” around the coun­try of large crowds gath­er­ing at 5am to take part in May Day rit­u­als. ​“It gen­uine­ly seems to be a thing at the moment,” he tells me.

But Michael Heaney, author of new book The Ancient Eng­lish Mor­ris Dance, is wary of pin­ning too much on recent pol­i­tics and ​“hes­i­tates” to men­tion Brex­it, say­ing ​“it’s the same kind of cul­ture war as con­sumed Eng­land in the lead up to the Civ­il War, when sup­port­ing Mor­ris pub­licly nailed your colours to the mast. 

“But what­ev­er side of the Brex­it debate you’re on, it gives occa­sion to be ask­ing your­self what it means to be British/​English, and ways of express­ing it,” he con­tin­ues. ​“All this new age is anoth­er way of reach­ing out to con­nec­tions with the (imag­ined) past.”

At the May Day dawn dance-out in Glouces­ter­shire, Boss dancer Katie Wat­ton says of the sur­pris­ing­ly large crowd: ​“It’s mind-blow­ing but so spe­cial. It puts the pres­sure on because it’s becom­ing less of a pri­vate cel­e­bra­tion, but we’re not an exclu­sive group. That’s the won­der­ful thing about Mor­ris – it’s very acces­si­ble. You feel just like a kid danc­ing. It’s liberating.”

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