Breathless in Berthoud dancing in Boulder, Colorado during the Maroon Bells 25th Anniversary Ale
Who Are We?
Frankly, we're a bunch of wild-eyed rascally hooligans who love to dance and cavort in public, to the sound of accordion, fife, and clashing sticks.
Many of us also dance with the Maroon Bells Morris Dancers.
What Is Morris Dancing?
For at least five hundred years, teams of English men and women have dressed in ribbons and bells, waved handkerchiefs and clashed sticks together, and, to the music of pipe and tabor, fiddle, concertina, or accordion, danced the Morris. The Morris is a performance, not a social dance. It appears to be very ancient, but historical evidence before the Middle Ages is scarce. The Morris is traditional, dynamic, mysterious, and a little absurd. People dance the Morris because they love it.
And when you've seen a pathetically grateful audience of three on a dismal wet summer's night at an otherwise deserted pub, and you've seen the landord's eyes light up at the prospect of selling 30 pints of best bitter ... and then his face fall to the first bars of the Hohner Wall of Sound playing Speed the Plough, then and only then have you seen the full glory of the Morris, and only then can you begin to understand what made our nation so great. a post to a concertina.net forum
What Is Border Morris?
Border Morris dancing is a style of Morris dancing originating in the area of the English border with Wales. The dances are boisterous and energetic, primarily stick dances, relying to a great extent on the impact of the performance. The dancers often dance in black-face, and the dancers' "kit" is often decorated with many ribbons or strips of material, known as rags. Besides the traditional dances, collected early in the twentieth century, Border teams dance many new dances, invented in the Border counties and in the U.S.A.
what the Bassett Street Hounds have to say about it