Morris Dance Research Articles

Panibharata and the Invention of Sinhala Folk Dance Repertoires in Post-Colonial Sri Lanka

This article focuses on the history of the Sinhala folk dance genre and its connection to Sinhala cultural nationalism in Sri Lanka. This paper aims to examine the formation of Sinhala folk dance as a tradition in the context of the rise of Sinhala nationalism during the 1940s and 1950s. Although performing arts were commonly practiced by villagers, the genre named Sinhala Folk Dance (Sinhala gemi näțuma) did not emerge until the 1930s in Sri Lanka. Around 1956, in the midst of the rise of Sinhala cultural nationalism, it is believed that the stylistic choices that preceded the modern creative work of the new nation were drawn from “folk” sources. A classic example of this genre is E.R. Sarachchandra’s play Maname, which became the marker of modern Sinhala theatre, and which was based on the folk theatre tradition, the nadagama. Here, the assumption is that folk art already existed in the villages, and that the Sinhala literati merely borrowed from it to create new performing art forms that represented the nation. However, this assumption is an oversight in folk dance in Sri Lanka, as demonstrated in this article which presents an alternative interpretation of the history of performing arts in Sri Lanka, a history which has not been highlighted in the 1956 cultural revolution discourse. As I demonstrate in this article, Sinhala choreographer Panibharata invented certain dances which are considered Sinhala folk dance today. Sinhala nationalists groomed Panis, a village drummer and dancer, considered to be a low-caste, underprivileged individual into Panibharata, a cosmopolitan artist. Fulfilling these nationalists’ desires, Panibharata created repertoires of “folk dance” that portrayed village life in an exotic and romantic guise, which is aptly exemplified in his goyam näțuma (rice-harvesting dance). Panibharata’s model of folk choreography continues to be interpreted as the genuine and only Sri Lankan folk dance tradition, a narrative that was institutionalized and disseminated through the system of public education. In contrast to that canonical narrative of the Sinhala folk dance tradition, I argue that the staged model of Sinhala folk dance is a fairly recent invention. I analyze archival records, dance curricula, and secondary sources and interpret them according to my personal experiences as a dancer. To contextualize the purely Sinhala folk dance tradition, I compare the Russian folk dance and the Morris dance of England, that developed as separate national folk dance traditions.

Fletcher’s Schoolroom: Actio and Dance as Humanist Pedagogy in The Two Noble Kinsmen

Act Three of William Shakespeare’s and John Fletcher’s The Two Noble Kinsmen features a scene, written by Fletcher, in which a Schoolmaster named Gerald teaches his students a Morris dance. Fletcher’s depiction of Gerald and pupils is a rare moment in early modern drama in which the humanist pedagogical praxis is acted on stage. In this essay, I draw on recent scholarship on dance, embodied performance and cognitive ecologies of the stage and classroom to illustrate the way in which the Morris dance functions as a complex commentary on performance ecologies and Humanist pedagogical methodology. I argue that throughout this scene, Gerald teaches his pupils how to dance by using the movements and terminology associated with actio, a performance of rhetoric in which the student used his body to act out his lesson. While actio was supposed to be an embodied experience comprised of both outward gestures and inward reflection, Fletcher satirizes the Gerald’s lack of mental awareness behind his movements, questioning whether rhetorical training could produce genuine, cognitive learning. Reading the Morris dance scene in this way illustrates the complexity of Fletcher’s contribution to The Two Noble Kinsmen. Fletchers undergirds this comedic moment with a serious critique of humanist schoolroom methodology.

DANCE AS A MARKER OF NATURAL CYCLES CHANGE IN TERRY PRATCHETT’S FANTASY NOVELS

Against the background of a widespread tendency to diminish the sacred meaning of ritual actions, Terry Pratchett’s strive to shed light on the archetypal principles of mythological consciousness in contemporary folklore makes it possible to restorethe connection of the old rites, which have lost their original sense, with the worldview bases of modern society and to reacralize the profane. The Elements of mythological consciousness, manifested in ritual actions inherent in the modern functioning of English folklore, play a meaningful and compositional role in Terry Pratchett’s novels «The Reaper» (1991), «Lords and Ladies» (1992) and «Wintersmith» (2006). In Pratchett’s novels, Morris dance, which traditionally heralds the summer beginning, is balanced by a dance that marks the beginning of winter, indicating the natural cycles change. This manifests the functions of a sacred act: a dialogue between the world and a human, extracting the last from the flow of everyday life, and finalizing the routine work of a farmer. The study suggests the analysis of artistic means describing the Morris dance ritual as a marker of natural cycle changes and as evidence of a human establishing contact with natural forces, enshrined in the narrative and embodied in the dynamic form of dance. A common harvest festival turns into a Dance of the Death and a Maiden, which moves the process of harvesting and preserving the harvest into the realm of the sacred. The motive of the Death and a Maiden dance is being developed in the same compositional plane with the Morris dance motive, as an element of the narrative about the natural balance of life and death,fertility and harvest, about the cycle of the universe based on the love drive. The article examines the compositional elements of choreographic ekphrasis, highlights the significant elements of such a description, indicates the markers of the sacred and the profane, intrinsic to ritual dance in Pratchett’s novels. The conducted research allows to determine the role of dance in Pratchett’s literature work as a marker of the transition from one state to another, as well as season cycle changes.

Babbitt Jazzed: The Bad Plus’s Jazz Trio Arrangement of Semi-Simple Variations

In 2008, the jazz trio The Bad Plus (piano, bass, and drums), on their album For All I Care, released two performances of their own arrangement of Babbitt’s Semi-Simple Variations (one of which includes an improvisation within it). A founding member of the group discusses the origins of this along with a tongue-in-cheek video in which three members of the Mark Morris Dance Company dance to this jazz rendition of Babbitt’s composition.

Moving Together: Supporting Attachment in Parent-Toddler Dance Classes

ABSTRACT Parent-Toddler Movement Class (PTMC) is a structured dance curriculum that introduces movement to toddlers and caregivers. Using a qualitative methodological approach, the present study investigated how PTMCs supported the attachment of 27 caregiver-toddler dyads. The children ranged in age from two- to three-years-old and were students enrolled at The School at the Mark Morris Dance Center in Brooklyn, New York. Each dyad participated in at least one of three cycles of eight, 45-minute sessions of PTMC. The central findings of this study identified a relationship between the caregiver’s attunement, goodness of fit, and relinquishment of control with subsequent growth in the secure base behaviors of their toddler. Further, PTMC served as an opportunity for dyads to invest and devote time to experience joy together. The application of the theoretical underpinnings and research findings of this study to one’s teaching practice are also discussed.

Rehearsals for the Real Thing

Rehearsals for the Real Thing Jay Rogoff (bio) As we crept toward that post-pandemic day when we could watch dancing bodies, in three-dimensional glory, perform before our eyes (cue the mysterious second movement of Robert Schumann's piano quintet, which Mark Morris used for V, his 2001 assertion of life's triumph over darkness), dance on video continued to fill some of the gap, reminding us what we were missing. For more than a year, I have focused on new dances devised during the pandemic, some of which will hold the stage when we once again gather in theaters, others revealing themselves immediately as creatures of necessity—reminders that dancers need to dance, choreographers need to arrange bodies, and audiences, however intrigued by the novel challenges of video and Zoom dance, crave the real thing. In [End Page 618] this final discussion of pandemic works, Mark Morris, the Pennsylvania Ballet, and the New York City Ballet offer three approaches: respectively, a live online performance, recorded simulacra of live performance, and an elegant film that doesn't pretend to be live dance but uses its own means to suggest that excitement. In May, the Mark Morris Dance Group streamed four works live from Brooklyn's BRIC House, including a world premiere, Tempus Perfectum. The title can mean "perfect," "exquisite," "excellent," or "completed time," but which does Morris intend? That his dancers perform in perfect time to the music, Brahms's Sixteen Waltzes. Op. 39? (They do.) That as the pandemic ends, his new work celebrates the end of a dreary time? (It does.) In any event, the performers in this concert all pointedly wear Covid masks as talismans against the plague—even Laurel Lynch in Three Preludes, a 1992 dance to Gershwin, and Brandon Randolph in Jealousy, a 1985 work to Handel, mask up, although both works are solos. Masks have evolved from symptoms into symbols, Morris knows, commemorating the imperfect time we hope we have now completed. By obscuring the dancers' facial expressions, they also force our focus onto their bodies and limbs, where Morris always wants us to look. The four dancers in Tempus Perfectum explore varieties of movement to the brief Brahms piano waltzes, played by Colin Fowler, MMDG's music director. Their black masks mark solidarity as well as precaution. They greet us by running at the camera, then peeling off at the last second, before Laurel Lynch, in a red dress (the costumes are uncredited), launches into the lovely and lilting first waltz. She skips with huge swoops of her legs in rond de jambe. Karlie Budge, in a light blue dress, performs sudden crunches and lunges during the second waltz, then lilts delicately left and right. Noah Vinson, in a blue top and black slacks, turns Budge's lilts into more deliberate rocking before turning with smooth grace. The turns grow more violent when Dallas McMurray solos, in a green top with black slacks, then yield to little leaps and off-balance skitters. After meeting the full cast, we expect them to partner up—these are waltzes, after all—especially when Budge returns to join McMurray. But Morris has made a career of overturning expectations, and as Budge floats up and back, McMurray exits. In fact, Tempus Perfectum never grants the thing time has perfectly trained us to anticipate, a man and a woman waltzing together. Instead, both men join Budge for a kind of syncopated waltz fugue, with silly strutting, heads thrown dramatically back, and grand swings of the arms. Lynch has another solo with large arm extensions, elegant sweeps and turns, and abrupt drops into steely, right-angled pliés, her arms shooting out to the sides. When the first duet arrives, it's for the two men; they wrap their arms around each other, mirroring steps, and taking each onto the other's hip. A women's duet then provides symmetry, Lynch dancing with Budge, weaving in and out of unison, Budge now sinking into plié while Lynch thrusts out her limbs. [End Page 619] Two more solos allude to folkdance, McMurray blending gaiety with severity, Lynch following emphatic leg thrusts with lovely arabesques. A Slavic-looking duet for the...

ПРАЗДНИКИ ЛОШАДЕЙ И ЛОШАДИ НА ПРАЗДНИКАХ: ЗНАЧЕНИЕ ТРАДИЦИЙ В СОВРЕМЕННОЙ ВЕЛИКОБРИТАНИИ

The image of a horse appears in many spheres of the British culture and in each case it has a special symbolic meaning. It is important to notice that the symbolic meaning is more essential in the British mentality than the material one. Festivals can be one of the spheres where we can observe the versatility and historical meaning of the horse image. On the one hand, horses as real animals play a significant role in various events: horse competitions, horse shows, parades, royal ceremonies, etc. On the other hand, there is also personification of fancy images of horses at British festivals. Different types of horse figures (hobby horses) take part at certain events. Each of them has its own history and is strongly connected to the location. The most famous horse event is horseracing taking place all over the country. There are 60 race tracks in Great Britain for this occasion. Horseracing appeared here in the XIV century. Soon the British worked out the rules for this event and they are current even today. Horseracing is not just sport for this nation, but a real holiday. Long ago Edward VII marked that it is “a garden party with racing tacked on”. So, for some people horseracing is a week of competitions among the best thoroughbred horses and for the others (ladies mostly) it is the opportunity to compete with each other in hat and dress design. It is significant to understand the difference between the notions “horseracing”, “horse competitions”, “horse show”. The first means classic racing which we have just discussed. Horse competitions are 10 international types of games approved by the International Federation of Equestrian Sports. A horse show is a festival holding the exhibition of the best breeds of horses and some types of competitions (e.g., show jumping, working hunter). One of the best known events is the Royal Windsor Horse Show which takes place every year in Windsor Home Park. It is always attended by the Royal Family. Another example is the Hyde Park festival aiming at choosing the Horse of the Year. Also, January 1 is the Day of Thoroughbred horses in Great Britain. It is a real holiday with the most unusual dishes for these animals (e.g. a Cheltenham pie 2018 made of hay, apples and carrots). At a number of British events horses play an important role, though they are not in the limelight. These are royal weddings, parades and a coronation. The Queen carriage is always carried by the Windsor Greys. There is even a statue to honour them in Windsor. These horses are also pictured at the Royal mail stamp. Personification of fancy images of horses can be seen at various British Festivals (16 in England, 3 in Wales, 1 on the Isle of Man): Padstow Hobby Horse Festival, Banbury Hobby Horse Festival, Minehead Hobby Horse Festival, Dunster Hobby Horse Festival, Hoodening, The Hunting of the Earl of Rone, Morris Dance, etc. The majority of them take place in the days of national holidays including Christmas, New Year, May Day, Halloween. Moreover, some pagan rites that deal with the image of a horse still exist in Great Britain. There is the festival to honour Epona who is a Celtic horse goddess (December, 18). The Welsh horse goddess Rhiannon is connected with the image of Mari Lwyd appearing in New Year events. The Irish horse goddess Macha is honoured at the festivals Lughnasa (August, 1) and Samhain (November, 1). Significantly, a horse is presented at festivals as a funny hero of a performance endowed with human traits, a friend to a person, and it is far from being a work animal. The image of a horse is more of a cultural value than a natural phenomenon.

The hobby-horse as a national and cultural component of the concept “horse” in the English linguoculture

The article dealt with a certain fragment of the linguistic world view, which is significant to be studied to provide a number of ways of describing of the national and cultural component of the concept “horse” in the English linguoculture. The article provides the description of a number of costume calendar customs prevalent in different parts of Great Britain after XIII century, with a central element the hobby-horse, which according to a number of authors (Lamb, Pikli), subsequently became a symbol of mass culture. The article considers the functioning of the studied fragment of the linguistic world view in the English phraseology and literary texts. The presented ethnographic material indicates to different functions, features and associative links of the hobby-horse, which is a central element of the described customs. The phraseological representation reflects the studied fragment of the linguistic world view in a partial way and indicates apparently to its later development. In its turn, the analysis of literary texts supported by ethnographic material, allowed to track the dynamics of new meanings emergence of the lexeme hobby-horse and its old meanings disappearance that were widespread in certain historic periods. The article concludes that the considered examples of the hobby-horse in literary texts though convey different meanings with either positive or negative connotation, however come from the common source (‘prancing hobby-horse of the morris dance’).

Enhancing Musicality in Ballet Technique Classes

ABSTRACTWhen dance teachers include attention to musicality—beat, tempo, meter, accent, duration, articulation, rhythm, canon—in their class exercises, students learn to move with a deeper connection to the accompanying music, develop a greater awareness of dancing together as an ensemble, and acquire a nuanced physicality that enhances their artistic potential. Drawing from more than two decades studying with and dancing for choreographer Mark Morris—known for his deeply intelligent marriage of music and movement—the author, a member of the Mark Morris Dance Group and a teacher for Morris's company and school, details specific ways ballet teachers can increase attention to musicality in their dance classes by offering practical examples of exercises and techniques.

Long-term effects of Dance for PD® on self-efficacy among persons with Parkinson’s disease

Background: Dance for Parkinson’s Disease or Dance for PD® (DfPD) classes were developed by the Mark Morris Dance Group and Brooklyn Parkinson Group in 2001. This exploratory study examined long-term effects of DfPD on non-dance activities outside the studio, functional mobility, self-efficacy, and quality of life (QoL).Methods: Individuals in four well-established DfPD classes completed a survey regarding perceived impact of DfPD. Response rate was 55%; 61 completed surveys were included in analyses.Results: Responses indicated that DfPD clearly impacts daily functioning outside the studio. Results of regression analyses indicated that functional mobility and self-efficacy were associated with QoL. Mediation analyses indicated that one way in which higher levels of functional mobility influence QoL is by enhancing self-efficacy of the PD participants.Conclusions: Because of the direct effect of self-efficacy on QoL, results suggest future research focus on self-efficacy as well as functional mobility and mood in dance research related to PD.

A Dance with Parkinson's Disease and University Students

ABSTRACTDance for PD® (Parkinson's disease) is a class designed for people living with the diagnosis and challenges of Parkinson's disease. The program was originally founded by the Mark Morris Dance Group, and teachers have been trained in these methods across the world. I led a Dance for Parkinson's Disease program in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, for several years. This article details the lessons I learned from my students about how to be a classroom and community leader through a focus on student empowerment, the value of shared teaching, and a consistent class structure.

Girls’ Carnival Morris Dancing and Contemporary Folk Dance Scholarship

Competitive, urban-centred and female-led, girls’ carnival morris dancing functions at a remove from the ‘traditional’ spaces of the English folk movement. However, it has a comparable history in north-western England where it retains great popularity. Perhaps this overlooked practice has the potential to unsettle dominant assumptions about contemporary folk performance in the United Kingdom.

Women Dancing the Morris in Fletcher and Shakespeare’s The Two Noble Kinsmen, 1613–2015

ABSTRACTThis essay analyses how the morris dance in The Two Noble Kinsmen – a crucial moment in the play’s treatment of gender and class rank – intervenes in seventeenth-century debates about the cultural function of morris dancing and especially of women’s roles within it. The essay considers what morris dancing might have signified at the play’s composition and earliest performances by analysing it alongside its courtly source, seventeenth-century pamphlets and dances inserted in other professional plays, and it examines how modern performances have remade the scene. While the play text empowers its female dancers, most twentieth- and twenty-first-century performances have limited their authority and made the dance into a scene that highlights the oppression of women. Two recent student performances in the USA and New Zealand have reframed the play’s morris as a dance that enables women to embrace playful bawdiness, seek reward, or resist social expectations.

Making Traditions: Girls’ Carnival Morris Dancing and Material Practice

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.

Apollo’s Banquet for children: Teaching baroque music to the young violinist

Name: Ryuko Reid Main Subject: Baroque Violin Research Supervisor: Johannes Boer Title of Research: Apollo’s Banquet for Children: Teaching baroque music to the young violinist Research Question: How can the baroque “rules” being used today in the field of historically informed performance practice be taught at a young age? Summary of Results: The purpose of this study is to investigate what aspects of the musical language of the baroque era can be experienced from twenty songs found in John Playford’s Apollo’s Banquet. This is a collection of country-dances, broad street ballads, theatre tunes, tunes from Morris dancing, Scottish tunes and French dances, that were published for the amateur violinist in 1670. In this study, these songs were taught to students between the ages of 5 and 10 with activities designed to create awareness of gestures, bar hierarchy, light cadences and other important baroque features, in a fun and approachable way. Videos and observations of the lessons show that the repertoire was well received and the paper shows that the use of the songs provided an effective initial stage in experiencing baroque music However the students would need to be exposed to many more examples of these baroque elements before they become consciously learned. This paper also concludes that other elements of baroque music not included in this study, such as rhetorical devices and improvisation could be investigated, and exploring folk music repertoire of the seventeenth century would provide our students with a richer experience of the baroque style. Biography: Ryuko Reid is a baroque violinist specialising in historically informed performance practice and is the artist director and leader of Amsterdam Corelli Collective. Ryuko works as a violin teacher in Muziekschool Amstelveen and studied the Kodály method at Koninklijk Conservatorium. She came to study baroque violin with Sophie Gent at Conservatorium van Amsterdam and is currently finishing her masters at Koninklijk Conservatorium, with Kati Debretzeni and Walter Reiter. Before moving to Amsterdam, she studied modern violin with Jan Repko, taught at Chetham’s School of Music and studied Dalcroze method in Manchester, UK.

Racism and Denial of Racism: Dealing with the Academy and the Field

AbstractWe discuss our experiences of both racism and its denial in the context of our interactions with research participants, research teams, and academic communities. Greenhill questions scholarly traditions that insist upon objectivist methods and, in the process, side with researchers and research participants who refuse to acknowledge and expose White-identified, privileged social actions. Reflecting on decades of responses to her own research on the performance of race and gender in Morris dancing and Brommtopp, she concludes that both the denial and the performance of raced and marginalized others underscore deeply held views about Canadian homogeneity, diversity, and multiculturalism. Marshall focuses on responses to the anti-racist histories she has collected, and, more importantly, to the ethnographic ways that she has collected them. By straddling the boundaries between academic and non-academic life, she has used her work to reveal the histories of people who have often lived in the shadows of dominant cultures. Yet questions about methods, methodology, and theory have sought to erase the results of research on the level of systems of knowledge--to make it impossible not because of its content but because of its sources. We contend that diversity must be about the use of multiple methods, theories, and approaches that guard against the denial of racism. Defending, explaining, and fighting for anti-racist perspectives is eye-opening and sometimes exhausting, even for two White-identified, privileged academics like ourselves.

Dance for PD: a preliminary investigation of effects on motor function and quality of life among persons with Parkinson's disease (PD).

In 2001, Dance for Parkinson's disease (DfPD(®)) classes for persons with Parkinson's disease and care partners were developed by Brooklyn Parkinson Group and Mark Morris Dance Group. A previous assessment suggested that individuals experience positive benefits from DfPD(®). The current preliminary uncontrolled study investigated the effects of a dance intervention on several motor and quality of life aspects of PD following 16 sessions (8 weeks; 20 h) taught by professional dancers/teachers. A mixed methods design was used to determine the effects of the class. Assessment instruments administered at baseline and post-intervention included the Hoehn and Yahr, UPDRS (part III), Berg Balance Scale, Beck Depression Inventory, and PDQ-39 and individual interviews after the last class. Hoehn and Yahr scores ranged from 1 to 4. UPDRS III total scores and sub scores of gait and tremor improved following the intervention (P < 0.05). During interviews participants reported physical, emotional, and social benefits. Despite the diversity of baseline measures post-class interview results were consistently positive across the sample. Twelve of 14 subjects (mean age 66.2) with idiopathic PD completed the sessions. After 4 years, four participants regularly attended DfPD(®) classes. The low attrition rate and continued attendance suggest notable adherence to the DfPD(®) class. The importance of the results is both clinical and conceptual, highlighting the value of using both quantitative and qualitative data to evaluate the benefits of dance with PD.

Dancing Among Schoolchildren

Dancing Among Schoolchildren Catherine Gunther Kodat (bio) We’d been at it all day, every day, for the past five days. It was a summer intensive, after all; being pushed was part of the deal. Still, we were grateful for the rest. While a small, dedicated group took the afternoon’s break as a chance to review one or another tricky passage or complicated bit of partnering, most of us welcomed the chance to towel off, sip some water, chat, catch our breath. Within ten minutes we’d be back on the floor, refreshed and ready for the next challenge. At least, that was the theory — and for nearly all of the dancers that was the practice, too. For me, the proverbial gap between theory and practice had never before felt quite so real — or so wide. As it had for many years, the Merce Cunningham summer dance intensive was held in the company’s eleventh floor studios in New York’s legendary Westbeth Center for the Arts. That much, at least, had not changed. Otherwise, nothing was as it had been. For Cunningham had died the year before at the age of ninety, leaving behind a technique, a repertoire, and a Legacy Plan that, among other things, called for the dissolution of his company following a final world tour. By July 2010 that Legacy Tour had entered its sixth month. The troupe’s final bow at the New York Armory was more than a year away, and there would be one last summer intensive at Westbeth, but an elegiacal mood was already in the air. On a small desk at the back of the main studio a votive candle burned near a tremendous potted plant from which hung a pair of dice, one of the tools used by Cunningham in his lifelong exploration of chance procedures in dance making. Next to the plant lay a copy of Corita Kent’s “Ten Rules for Students and Teachers,” a primer for creativity popularized by John Cage, Cunningham’s partner in life and art who had died seventeen years earlier (“Rule 4: Consider everything an experiment”). Handmade, witty, and elegant, it was a memorial perfectly attuned to its subject. Even so, it was a memorial — a tribute to a vanished time, a reminder of what was lost. In accordance with its founder’s wishes, the Merce Cunningham Dance Company would disband, but the dances themselves would live [End Page 657] on, available for performance by other troupes whose members were up to the works’ formidable technical challenges. So it was not surprising that the 2010 summer intensive drew a full complement of students: undergraduate dance majors from Juilliard and Purchase, junior professionals from countries as distant as Singapore and Finland. And then there was me, the middle-aged English professor. As William Butler Yeats had long before, I found myself among schoolchildren, young people preparing themselves “in the best modern way” for whatever artistic challenge the future might hold for them. Obviously, my purpose was not the same as theirs. Like them, I was there to learn, but as a scholar, not a performer. This commitment to fortifying archival discovery with studio insight grows from my own dance practice, and this was not my first summer intensive. When, on returning to the United States from its sojourn in Brussels, the Mark Morris Dance Group offered an intensive in Boston, I’d quickly signed on, happily throwing myself into passages from Gloria and Grand Duo in what would turn out to be the last childless summer of my life. But that was years ago. And while I had never stopped dancing, like Yeats, I was not “of Ledaean kind.” Still, neither was I an “old scarecrow” — at least, not yet. Though no Odette, I was a dancer. Just not a young one. The focus that summer in Westbeth was a section of Cunningham’s 1992 work Change of Address. My role was small. The week had begun well, but even as I relished the return to the rhythm of morning class and afternoon rehearsal, I was having trouble keeping up. On the one hand, this in itself was no big deal. I...

Mary Neal and Emmeline Pethick: from mission to activism

The late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries witnessed the rise of communal religious activities among British women of various Protestant denominations as well as a broader definition of the spiritual for many people. Communal religious service structures created a space in which young, mostly middle-class women could acquire both a degree of autonomy and a sense of effecting change in a wider sphere than would typically be open to them and, just as importantly, allowed them to meet and develop ties with others beyond their immediate family circles. This article looks at how two young women, Mary Neal and Emmeline Pethick, used one such organisation, the West London Mission, as a springboard for wider activism: Emmeline Pethick, as Emmeline Pethick-Lawrence, came to prominence as one of the leaders of the Women's Social and Political Union, and Mary Neal's work on recovering the disappearing morris dance for the benefit of working-class girls brought her national recognition. Both women benefited from friendship networks which allowed them to draw other women into their work and both faced opposition from male-dominated power structures, but the spiritual element with which they imbued their activism remained integral to their projects and to their lives. Ultimately, though, the evolution of their spiritual beliefs brought them to assess their life achievements in very different ways.

The Late Lancashire Witches:

ABSTRACT In The Late Lancashire Witches (1634) Thomas Heywood and Richard Brome depict witches and their work as intelligible, even mundane parts of a society replete with community rituals and ceremonies. In the county of Lancashire depicted in the play, one may find gallants hunting (1.1, 2.4), gentlemen dining and drinking together (1.1, 2.2, 4.5), an elaborate wedding featuring a feast and dancing (3.1, 3.3), and a skimmington ride to mock the conjugal mishaps of the couple married earlier (4.3). The presence of so many community rituals establishes the play's setting in Lancashire, a region that was notorious for its traditionalism due to its significant recusant community and proclivity for older festive practices, such as Morris dances and maypoles. By showing this community already employing a number of traditional practices, several of which are deployed to manage local problems, the playwrights argue that this community—which includes witches—functions perfectly well. Through the depiction of so many festive gatherings in their witch play, Heywood and Brome interrogate the hegemony and exclusion that so often defines witchcraft plays. Instead, The Late Lancashire Witches reveals how the chaos of witchcraft may be incorporated into social coherence.