In Flander's Fields

We made up this dance when we first visited Flanders 5 years ago. It is called 'In Flanders Fields” and the chorus of the dance represents the soldiers of all nations marching into no-man's land, puffing out their chests in the unequal struggle between flesh and metal. Obviously the dance is meant to highlight the terrible waste of a whole generation of Europeans. We would like to dedicate the dance to all the molly dancers who fought and died here. After the First World War our type of dancing died out because there were too few left to carry on the tradition. We hope that by bringing the dancing back to the place where it was destroyed we are, in our small way, honouring the memory of those unbelievably brave men.

The dance is intended to celebrate the generations of people who kept what we know as British traditional dance alive until the First World War when so many of them were killed and traditional rural life was irrevocably changed. It is not, of course, supposed to be anti-German but anti-war and the knock on effects that wars have on so many areas of life.

The dance is played to the music the European National Anthem Ode to Joy, and finishes:

Alle Menschen werden Brüder,
wo dein sanfter Flügel Weilt.