by Rich Holmes, April-June 2003
As a casual examination of this web site will demonstrate, I'm having a lot of silly fun with Griffin's Corners Morris. That, I think, is entirely appropriate, but it might lead you to believe GCM is nothing but a joke; it isn't -- I may not take it solemnly, but I do take it seriously.
Here are some serious thoughts on GCM in particular and morris in general. They're my thoughts, not necessarily endorsed by my musicians, but they're the thoughts underlying the existence and aspirations of GCM.
John Dexter (a member of the first true American morris team, the Village Morris Men, and the founder of the Binghamton Morris Men) once told me the only possible answer to the question "Why can't women dance with your team?" is "Because." That may be as good an answer as any. Or to rephrase question and answer more positively, "Why men's morris?" "Because it must be." Men's morris doesn't lend itself to rational explanation. But for some men, it satisfies the soul in a way nothing else does.
I hasten to add (for those unfamiliar enough with me to need to be told) I am entirely in favor of women's and mixed morris teams; indeed, I've been involved with both over the years (as a musician in the case of women's morris, obviously), even participated in founding three mixed morris or sword sides (Ribbonsteel Rapper, Salt Springs Morris, and Flying Bark Morris), and have enjoyed them. In some circumstances even a devoted single-sex morris advocate must acknowledge mixed morris is the only feasible choice, if one is to have a viable side; and it would be churlish to deny the pleasures of morris to those who for one or another reason wish to dance mixed.
But only the obtuse would dispute that there is a different dynamic between men's, women's, and mixed teams. For fundamental biological reasons, men tend to dance and to interact differently than women; of course, there's wide variation in the way different men dance and interact, too. But fundamentally, there's a difference in the way groups of men, groups of women, and mixed groups bond. "Male bonding" is a cliché, but has a basis in fact; and while the behavior of a bonded group of men may not always be what outsiders would approve of (not that men have any monopoly on that), that bonding is a force that can be directed toward great good and creativity. So can mixed group bonding, but it's different, and lacks some of the qualities I like about a men's group.
In our culture, especially, this phenomenon of creative male bonding is rare. We are not a society that encourages men to join together for creative purposes. Unless you consider hockey "creative", and I don't. I guess the main exception is music: all-male musical performance groups from (at one time) the New York Philharmonic to Run-DMC have always been a part of our culture. (And, oddly enough, no one ever seems to ask Run-DMC why they don't include women.) Outside of music, I can think of few American male creative groups. Men's morris is thus an anomaly -- an anomaly to be encouraged, as a way of channeling the male bonding impulse toward something wonderful.
Can men's morris actually succeed? There are those who claim it can't, at least in particular circumstances. Syracuse, for example: Many morris dancers will tell you men's morris simply doesn't work in that community.
This flies in the face of fact. Men's morris has worked there. The Bassett Street Hounds were a men's team for eleven years. In some of those years our numbers were very lean: we were down to four or five active dancers for most of 1988 to 1990. But just before that we had about nine dancers, and in 1992 and 1993 there were thirteen dancers active! (I think only twelve were active at the same time, and I don't think more than eleven ever showed up for the same practice.) That of course was a high we could not -- or at least did not -- sustain, but we did have a viable side of six or more dancers for all but about three of those eleven years. The membership collapse of 1995-1996 happened not because the team was male, but because the team had problems -- of which I acknowledge being probably the most serious one. (I think I've learned since then.) While going mixed doubled the Hounds' potential recruiting power, only repairing those problems allowed the team to rebound, and huzzah for that! But had they chosen to do so, I believe they could have rebounded as a men's team, smaller of course than the mixed team they became, but viable.
Meanwhile, in the even smaller and stodgier city of Binghamton, the Binghamton Morris Men have been active for more than thirty years. Nowadays they usually have to draw on dancers from Syracuse, Albion, and Ithaca to get six men to a practice (and even so, practices happen infrequently), and their strong force at some danceouts is due to former and honorary Binghamtonians who come from all over -- but the fact that they do come from all over, and that members drive to Binghamton from Ithaca and Syracuse and Albion to practice, I think demonstrates the team's fundamental strength. The Binghamton Men are aging -- as most morris teams are -- and who knows how long they can keep going. (The example of one Binghamton Man, the late Howie Seidel, who danced the morris for over fifty years, gives us hope.) But there is no question that they have succeeded.
The Binghamton Men as a successful men's team in a small city are an exception, but one that proves men's morris is possible almost anywhere. Mostly of course it's found in the bigger cities: Foggy Bottom in Washington, DC; Kingsessing in Philadelphia, PA; the Bouwerie Boys in New York, NY; Pinewoods, the Black Jokers, Newtowne, and Commonwealth in the Boston, MA area; the Toronto Morris Men in Toronto, ON; and so on. But also consider Albemarle in Charlottesville, VA; the Pokingbrook Men (half of the joint Pokingbrook side) in Albany, NY; the Berkshire Morris Men, the Marlboro Morris Men, and Juggler Meadow, all in western Massachusetts; the Not For Joes in Mystic, CT -- and, for over a decade, the Bassett Street Hounds in Syracuse. It can be done.
So why is Griffin's Corners so small a team? I haven't been recruiting, really. I'd be happy to have a full side, but I need a break from hustling for new members. I'm just not naturally the recruiting type.
Some men's teams have acquired a reputation among non-men's teams for snobbishness. In fact, some men's teams are snobbish. And should be. But for the right reasons... and snobbish, maybe, isn't the word for it.
I've always found it puzzling how strongly polarized morris dancers are on one subject: quality of dancing. Practically all morris dancers claim to want to dance well. But some then go on to say words to the effect of, "But dancing well isn't the point of morris. The point is to have fun. It's the rough spots that make it real. I've seen teams that are technically perfect: all the steps exactly right, all the figures in perfect synch -- but no soul, no spirit. And they didn't look like they were having any fun at all. I knew someone who danced on one of those teams. The fore was a slavedriver and everyone on the team was miserable with all the drilling and criticism." And so on.
I've never understood this viewpoint. I suppose there are teams with slavedriving fores and miserable members -- I know there were, because I was such a fore, before I figured out my approach was terribly wrong. But the straw man seems to be that good dancing requires tyrant fores and miserable dancers, and that's just preposterous. That's a prescription for bad dancing, not good. As for the "technically perfect, no soul, no spirit" thing, I've yet to see such a thing in the flesh. One wonders if perhaps the observer fails to see the spirit because he is too busy being annoyed by the technical excellence.
The core of this thesis seems to be "good dancing = no fun", and I suppose that is true -- for the sort of dancer who believes it to be. Certainly there are dancers, many of them, who just don't care much about dancing well, who are content to screw around, get it kind of right, and have a laugh doing so. Putting in the effort to straighten out the lines, synchronize the figures, get off the ground where appropriate, cover large distances where appropriate, and so on, isn't what they want to do, and making them do it will only make them unhappy.
But what these people often fail to understand is that there are other dancers who feel differently, for whom the equations are "good dancing = fun; bad dancing = no fun". I am one of those. To me, the enjoyment of doing and watching morris is highest, and its spirit is strongest, precisely when the dancing is the best, and as a dancer I am not just willing but eager to work at getting the dancing to look the way the fore thinks it should look.
[And I need to interpolate a couple of clarifying notes here. One obvious way to improve at least the potential of a team for dancing well is to kick out anyone over thirty, anyone who is not in prime physical condition, and anyone who can't pass some kind of audition. Given that I would be one of the first against the wall when that revolution came, it should not surprise you that this is not what I have in mind when I talk about a team dancing well.
[Because, while I feel the derisive comments frequently made about professional dancers by the "we-just-want-to-have-fun" faction are uncalled for and often simply untrue, I do agree that the morris is and ought to be a dance of the people, done by those who want to do it. And therefore, what I mean by "dancing well" is not "having the team do whatever it takes to present the best possible dancing" but "having the members of the team do whatever they can to present the best dancing they can."
[And -- this is something that I've only recently integrated into my morris viewpoint -- a good deal of what makes for good quality dancing has nothing to do with extreme athleticism or precision anyway. Certainly energy and precision ought to be there at some level, or at least should appear to be there. But I think nine tenths of good morris is summed up in the ideas of style and synergy.
[Style: Dance like you mean it. Go out there with confidence and assurance, and a take-charge attitude. Take charge of your sticks, for instance: don't be afraid to stick hard, and at the same time don't let your sticking get beyond your control. Likewise take charge of your stepping, your figures, your presentation generally. And synergy: all I mean by this is, you're aware: you know where you are and what you're doing, and where the rest of your side is and what they're doing, and you make what you do mesh with what they do. With that awareness you make every dance into something more than the sum of its parts.
[Are these things difficult? No! Then why do so few teams want to do them?
[End of interpolated notes...]
Given that attitude, I don't know why it took me sixteen years to get around to joining the Binghamton Morris Men. The BMM do care about dancing well, and they work at it. The result is they look good, and they enjoy what they're doing at least as much as any other team I've ever been on, and they've been doing it for more than thirty years. And I've never heard it said they lacked spirit. In fact, if I may quote from an observer's web site,
The thing that it took me years to understand about Morris is that it really can be beautiful. You wouldn't think a lot of people leaping around in funny clothes could be, but it's true.
The first time I saw Morris that made me want to cry (in a good way! in a good way!) was at the Toronto ale of 2002. The Binghamton Morris Men were doing a show dance after dinner in the good ol' Toronto Australia New Zealand Athletic Club, and they were maybe the best I had ever seen. There was this young guy who wasn't even very tall, but it was like his knees had springs in them. For the first time, I understand what athletes feel when they're watching people win the Olympics. There was something so beautiful and elemental about those dancers, something that had never hit me like that before.
[I can quote that without blushing because I wasn't in that set.]
So if it's snobbishness to prefer watching, working with, and hanging out with teams that care deeply about dancing well, then so be it: I'm a snob, and I'm glad there are snobbish teams around I can watch and dance with. Those who enjoy sloppy dancing are welcome to do it. Just don't expect me to take as much of an interest in what you do.
Of course, snobbishness has its dark side. There's the "we're men and you're mixed" or even "we're men and you're women" snobbishness; the "we're English and you're American" snobbishness; the "we're Ring and you're Federation" snobbishness. These have no excuse, though for at least the first two one can see the reason: the passion for good dancing tends to be seen most strongly among men's teams, least strongly among mixed teams. Indeed, I find there are very few mixed teams that appear to care deeply about dancing well. (Bluemont comes to mind as one that does.) Why this should be, I don't know, but it's been my observation. Given the strength of that correlation, it becomes reasonable (though still deplorable) that the disdain for sloppy morris should be short-circuited into a disdain for mixed or women's morris.
And then there are those who disdain women's and mixed morris out of sheer sexism and misguided insistence on "tradition" (even though mixed and women's morris are "traditional"), but fortunately their numbers are on the decline.
Dave Stryker (of Newtowne and Binghamton) once wrote me a rather scathing email about "invented traditions" in which he asked something to the effect of "Why aren't the collected traditions enough for you?" To which I replied along the lines of "Of course Bampton is enough -- for Bampton. Headington is enough -- for Headington. Abingdon is enough -- for Abingdon. So what would be enough for Syracuse?"
Now, aside from its being oxymoronic, I have other issues with the term "invented tradition". Indeed, I'd rather use "style" than "tradition" even in talking about the collected dances. To me "the Bampton tradition" refers not just to the repertoire of Bampton dances done in the Bampton style, but everything about the Bampton morris that makes it distinct -- including such facets as the May Bank Holiday event, and even the simple fact that it's based in the town of Bampton. A team elsewhere can do Bampton dances in the Bampton style, but they can't replicate the Bampton tradition.
Unfortunately the term "style" is often used to refer to larger branches of the morris tree: border, Cotswold, northwest, etc. Still, I can't think of a better word. So herein, I'll use "style" to refer to different divisions of Cotswold morris, "traditional" or otherwise.
I've never understood why new, locally developed styles are not more widespread. Maybe it's just because they're hard to develop? But that didn't stop their proliferation in the 18th-19th centuries. In Bacon there are about two dozen distinct Cotswold morris styles, and it seems likely most of the 150-odd Cotswold locations Chandler lists has having had morris had their own particular style and repertoire. The Old Dead Guys' teams seem to have lifted dances from one another, but they just did not do other teams' styles: they took pride in their own style, and when they did another team's dance, they adapted it to their own style. "Doing Bampton" in Ducklington would have been unthinkable, unless perhaps as a parody.
So when a revival team tries to emulate the letter of what a "traditional" team did -- imitating their style and repertoire -- it goes completely against the spirit of what those dancers did -- expressing themselves in a style unique to them.
This is not to say no one should do Bampton but Bampton. There's much to be learned by studying and practicing and performing the collected styles. (No doubt the multiplicity of Cotswold styles arose from adaptation and evolution of one style into several others -- Headington didn't just pop up out of nowhere.) And there's no denying it's enjoyable to do them; I wouldn't be with Binghamton if I didn't think so.
The conscious creation of a new style is a tough job, and it's not for everyone. Better to succeed as a "Bampton" team than to flounder as a team trying to build a style. But for those with the means and motivation, the creation of a local unique style can, I think, be very vitalizing.
I had an interesting exchange of correspondence with Chris Clarke a few years ago on the subject of local styles, and he (somewhat to my surprise) agreed with me on their desireability. His proposed recipe, however, differed from mine. Start with a collected tradition, he said; and never mention its name, never watch another team do it; don't keep videos or detailed notes on how you do it; rarely if ever make any conscious changes to it; and let it evolve. Which it will, if you don't keep "correcting" it based on how other teams or earlier incarnations of your team do it.
There's some sense in this. I've seen invented styles that seem to have been created by intentionally setting out to do something very different from any collected style, and almost always they come across as (to again paraphrase Stryker) self-indulgent crap. They're full of things that are different done just to be different, and complicated things done just because the simple things have been done already, and they just don't strike me as having the organic wholeness of the collected styles. They'd probably acquire it if allowed to evolve, but it'd take a while.
Of course the problem with Clarke's recipe is its utter impracticality for any side wanting to participate in the wider morris world. A team that danced only by itself in its own locality, rarely or never touring with other sides, would be able to develop a style in this way, but most of us would chafe at such isolation. And if you dance a collected style and interact with other teams, you'll always have someone telling you (or you telling yourself), "It's supposed to go like this." Evolution is thwarted.
Eventually it occurred to me that one way around the problem is to start with a collected style, consciously impose just enough changes on it at the outset to make it a clearly separate style, and then let it evolve. You won't have to avoid other teams because they won't be able to tell you how your distinct style is supposed to go; but, hopefully, you've kept the organic wholeness of the original more less intact. Not only does this do an end run around the anti-evolution tendencies, but it's a lot easier than making up a whole new style and repertoire from scratch. One problem Salt Springs had was that its repertoire was very small and expanded very slowly and painfully, because we were starting from zero. Had we begun with a modification of a collected style and repertoire, we would have had that style's full set of dances to draw on from day one. (We did start with a modification of Withington, but that itself is a recently invented style with only three published dances, and we decided not to use them.)
That's the approach I've taken with Griffin's Corners. The style is based largely on one collected Cotswold style (I don't see any need to mention which one), with some inspiration drawn from another, very different collected style (ditto), some elements pulled out of thin air, and some jig ideas taken from dances in other collected repertoires. At the moment these jigs are all we do, of course, but if ever Griffin's Corners has a full side, we'll have a large body of existing dances to start with.