FASH Chat – Great Caper Morris
In June, I had great fun helping with Great Caper Morris. I was invited to help run some sessions teaching Morris Dancing at Primary Schools around Weymouth. We went to 3 schools and worked through most of the classes, doing some simple country dances with the younger children and Cotswold, Border and North West Morris with the older ones.
Great Caper Morris are a small group of folk, based around Bristol, led by Kim Woodward and they have managed to get the admin side of going to schools all sorted out, such as the Health and Safety stuff and how to put the deal together so that the schools pay small sums to cover the expenses. This means that they can approach Primary, Junior and Secondary Schools and get children dancing.
Each session starts with a chat about what they are going to learn and usually some questions like - what country does Morris Dancing come from? We had answers of Australia, Brazil, America, Belgium as well as Scotland, Wales and occasionally, usually after a lot of prompting; England. Then comes a warm up and a bit of tuition and by the end of the period, the class will have a dance learnt, at least enough to feel complete.
Kim and her partner John Clifford also offer sword and rapper dancing for the older groups, so they pretty much have the whole range covered. While they may not be unique across the country, they must be pretty rare and are clearly following our wishes of bringing dance and folk music to children, so it was great to be able to support them.
They have a wonderful hope of getting children dancing at the Olympics and it is a plan that just could work. If we could find a dozen or so people around the country to go to a dozen or so schools each and teach 30 or so children the same dances, then there would be a stadium full. In fact they have already tried this out on a small scale - a year or so back they got 220 children dancing in Bristol Town Hall. Half in red danced North West and half in white danced Cotswold and they all formed up into a St Georges Cross. As I write I am watching the video that was produced and the TV coverage they got tells me that 1760 bells and 440 hankies and sticks had to be sorted out!
The plan is still progressing; it just needs a little nudge forward to get some relatively small sums of money to cover expenses. The Bristol project got enough cash from a lottery grant to allow for the children to be trained and kitted out. Let's hope that it can move on and have a few thousand children dancing for the Olympics. It would, after all, be entirely in line with the Olympic direction of involvement for all.
Their next project, which may have happened by the time you read this as it is on 26th September, is to get sixth youth teams with members from 8 to 25 dancing in the Olympic venue at Weymouth. The performance will be as part of the Cultural Olympiad "Count me In" celebrations and has been granted the Olympic Inspire Mark.
Meanwhile, Great Caper Morris are continuing to visit schools around the country and I intend encouraging any schools I can towards their way. If any of your children or grandchildren are the right age, why not see if you can get a prompt to their school to set up a session.
Dennis Wheeler
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Submitted by (to whom technical queries and requests for additional links only) and Edited by Dennis Wheeler, Penshurst, Vicarage Lane, Swanmore, Hants SO32 2PW 01489 892911 editor@fash.org.uk).