Ouse Washes Molly

Morrigan's

The above was the repertoire when we first danced at Sidmouth in 1995. Thereafter we started to go down a road that afflicts many dance groups, of believing that the more complicated we made things the better they would be. We spent almost a complete practice season working on a dance to fit the tune of Gary Glitter’s “Rock and Roll”. We should have known that anyone who indulges in such nefarious practices as trawling the internet rather than sensible things like trawling for eels would lead us astray. Although this process threw up lots of interesting ideas it did not end in a dance that we did in public, unless you count a Chinese restaurant in Holland. Despairing of getting it finished we made up Morrigan’s Birth, in an evening. This dance is named after the son of one of our dancers, made up on the day of his birth. Originally it was performed to a double bass solo. Unfortunately we don’t have a solo double bass anymore but the dance is in the process of getting itself a tune, the favourite at the moment being Go East as sung by the Vet Shop Boys.

There was a gap in our dance composing from 95 until 97. This was for a number of reasons, most particularly during this period we had a number of dancers leave and they were replaced mainly by people who had not danced our type of dance before and so most of our time was spent getting the “new” people conversant with both what we did and how to do it. We did, during this period, continue to work on the dances that we had, adapting them for different circumstances and numbers of dancers. Mississippi can now be performed by anything from 6 to 16 dancers and has been changed to suit a stage performance. The end of Morrigan’s was changed for a similar reason.