Berkshire Morris
The Dances

Morris Dances are a miracle of symmetry. The almost uncanny precision with which the dancers mirror one another's movements gestures, even facial expressions is a tribute to the long hours of exhausting practice. Only through years of patient and focused repetition and rehearsal can this incredible discipline be maintained. Only now, through the technical breakthrough of high-speed photography, can this amazing quality be captured (see photo at right).

Each dance has a meaning of its own. Different villages have slighlty different traditions of dancing, complete with distinctive stepping, costumes, movements, flourishes of handkerchiefs and sticks, and local beers. The Berkshire Men dance primarily out of the "Fieldtown" tradition, from the village of Leefield in the Cotswald dales, but also in the traditions of the villages of Upton-on Sevren, Philadelphia, PA Adderbury, and their own Berkshire tradition - a local "folk-process" adaptation of Fieldtown

The Dances Deciphered

The Men of the Berkshire Morris are proud to carry on the tradtion of Morris Dancing, and in the footsteps of Cecil Sharp they have spent arduous hours in confabulation over endless pitchers of beer interviewing one another on the specific interpretations of meaning of the individual dances. Now, for the first time, they are sharing this secret knowledge with you - the public (or "The Great Unwashed," to use the traditonal Morris designation).

• Adderbury Lads O' Buncham:
  The primary characteristic of this dance is its juxtapostion of aggression and reconciliation. In the intial movement, the dancers form a moving circle, an ancient representation of the dynamic harmony of nature - while they sing a plaintive song about human weakness ("Oh, Dear Mother, what a fool I be!") and the "blind" longing for intimacy. They then proceed in perfect unison to the "head" of the set - obviously symbolizing their aspiration to transcend their plight. But, after moving backwards (backsliding?) they clash, seemingly inevitably. After this outburst, they turn once again to the head and move forward, as if determined intention could somehow provide escape from the existential tension. But once again, they fall back, and once again they clash - a profound expression of the human predicament! This figure is rather tellingly known, in Morris parlance as the "up and up"
  Then follows the "chorus," a display of unbridled aggression, as the dancers whack away at one another with a fearsome ritualized violence which is repeated - with variations - at intervals thoughout the dance. Some find its bloodthirsty character almost too painful to watch, while others seem to find a catharsis in the frank, unsparing revelation of civilization's snarling, animal face.
  This paroxysm of fury is immediately followed by the first attempt at reconciliation - the "half-gyp," - a figure in which the dancers face one another in apparent openenss but then pass each other without making contact - literally "missing" each other's presence - only to fall back into the helpless stasis of the original postion. They then repeat the movement, this time from a different angle, but again, fail to make contact. The frustration of this lost opportunity expresses itself in a reptition of the desperate flailing of the chorus.
  The "back-to-back" figure takes this frustrating isolation one step further, as the dancers not only fail to make contact initially, but then "cross the lines" - literally "behind one another's backs" - to end up back where they began, apparently no wiser and no closer to the communion for which they long.
  Again, the outlet for the rage that builds up is the shattering chorus.
  The fourth figure hints at the possibility of somehting more, as the dancers finally engage in the "hands around" figure. But although some degree of contact is finally achieved, it proves illusive and ephemeral, and at the end of the figure, the dancers are once again isolated and confrontational, and the wild torment of the chorus underlines their sense of futility and hopelessness.
  The final figure - the rounds - evokes the lost innocence of the harmony and unison of the intital movement, as the dancers form a moving circle once again - but this time the circle returns on itself - a gesture which some interpret as a sign of the endless cycle of life, and others see as a depressing return to the status quo.
  The dance ends with a final chorus, with the weary dancers now perhaps merely going through the motions of anger - their aggressive energy defused by the ritual of the dance. And at the final moment, when the cycle of violence seems inevitible and inescapable, the dancers break the "fourth wall" and suddenly, unexpectedly, confront the audience with their sticks raised, but motionless and in contact with the sticks of their former adversaries, in a moment of stasis that demonstrates the transcendent possibility of real, in-the-moment contact. Thus, what began as a chronicle of human weakness, failure and disablity culminates in a gesture of triumphant hope.

This detailed analysis of the cryptic, disguised meanings of the established forms of the Morris should give the interested student a point-of-view for a more profound and careful analysis of the hidden implications of the activity.

For a fuller (if somewhat controversial) analysis see the manuscript of P. Beauchamps Dongville-Smythe's unpublished (but widely-circulated) Doctoral Thesis, "Morris: The Secret, Hidden, Concealed, Private, Untold Story." A post-modern, deconstructionist feminist perspective is provided by Gertrude Manwhacker's "The Morris Tradition: Another Hideously Silly Bastion of Male Exclusivity and Barely-Disguised Male Rage Against Women," which first appeared in the August 2001 issue of "Flannel Shirts and Work Boots Magazine." A light-hearted and more accessible popular study, mostly based on personal recollections of a long association with American Morris, is the recently published "I Am Not S*r*k*r," By David Knott-St*y*e*.

Here are a few more brief summaries of some popular dances performed by the Berkshire Morris Men

• Berkshire Red
  This dance, created in the Berkshire Tradition, is an impressioninstic interpretation of the philosophical principle that no matter how bad things are, they can always get worse, and its corollary, that no matter how cynical you get, it's hard to keep up. Not conicidentally, it was created at the cusp of the Clinton Impeachment and the first G.W.Bush Presidency. Its spare figures, with only four dancers, presaged Bush's harsh movement toward the selfish and parsimonious allocation of resources, and its constant re-orientation of the set reflects the confusing and disorienting effects on the common man of a socio-political system that had clearly "lost its bearings."

• Three Musketeers
  Appropriately known as "the French Dance" - for reasons that should be obvious - this performance is nothing more nor less than a glorified "mating display" - similar to that performed by the male Ptarmigan. The elaborate flourishes, the displays of bravado, the thinly-veiled metaphoric reference in the refrain sung during the last chorus, all point to the deadly serious subtext of this seemingly harmless "entertainment."
  It is worth remarking that this dance was originally created by "les Hommes de King Sessing, á Philadelphia, en Pennsylvania;" a region of the US celebrated as the "City of Brotherly Love," and well known for its unusual levels of testosterone. This was the region that produced "Founding Father" Benjamin Franklin, who boasted of having sired more than 60 illegitimate children! It is probably more than coincidental that Franklin spent much of the Revolutionary War period in...France!
  A display of virile power, lusty enthusiasm, precise, expert technique and sheer endurance, Les Trois Mousquetiers is performed only by the most energetic, daring and manly Morris Sides. The consequences can be profound. This dance has been known to evoke the apparition of the celebrated "Woman In The Yellow Dress."

• Robin Hood's Ride
  This dance was originally devised during the "Dark Ages" of Morris Dancing (the late 1980s) as a form of "self- flagellation," a self-abasing penance for the enjoyable excesses of Morris Life. Its punishing, repetitive and largely uninteresting form is more designed to induce a near-death experience for the Men themselves than to entertain the audience. In fact, this dance is often performed when audiences become too enthusiastic and demanding - thrusting their purses forward at the Bagman and insisting that he empty them, and beginning to cavort, frolic and gambol themselves - as a way of calming them and/or driving them away.
  The seemingly endless rotations and counter-rotations have a stupifying effect that has only recently begun to be studied scientifically (Bryan Munchly, D.D.S.'s groundbreaking recent article "The Hypnogogic Response To Incessant Rounds and How It Is Like Novocaine In Motion" is in the May 2004 issue of The Lancet). If there were ever any deeper significance beyond an expression of the existential ennui of pointless day following identical day in an endless, meaningless "round," (a sort of Morris version of "Waiting For Godot") it has been missed by modern scholars.

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