Our dances
Seabright performs dances from a variety
of morris including Cotswold and Longsword
dance styles.
Adderbury
The village of Adderbury lies in northern
Oxfordshire.
The existence of the traditional
Adderbury morris side was first documented
by Janet Blunt. In 1916 she began
interviewing William "Binx" Walton, who was
then 80 years old. Walton had been foreman
of the Adderbury side for a 20 year interval
at the middle of the 19th century. In 1919
Blunt introduced Walton to Cecil Sharp, who
watched Walton's performances and published
detailed descriptions in his Morris Book.
Subsequent researches have determined
that there were once as many as 3 morris
sides in Adderbury, and the names of more
than 2 dozen of the 19th century dancers
have been documented. During Whitsun week
they performed their dances in Adderbury and
the neighboring towns.
The best reference for the Adderbury
dances (indeed, one of the best books for
teaching any morris) was published in 1989
by Tim Radford and the Morris Federation.
ADDERBURY TRADITION: Cotswold Morris Dancing
(ISBN 0 948383 05 4).
Adderbury figures as done by Seabright
Seabright does a right-footed Adderbury that
covers a lot of ground. Early in 1995 some
of the first-year dancers requested the list
of standard figures to be used when we
dance. So far we have these
History and
Definitions and
Detailed Lists
Amble On Down
The village of Amble on Down lies in
Lummoxshire.
Amble on Down is a living tradition (as
Chipping Camden and Abingdon) which is among
the most recently discovered. It is said to
have maintained a continuous tradition for
over 350 years. The first US performance of
this tradition appears to have been in 1991,
but as with all information about AOD this
is difficult to verify.
The tunes for the tradition were
collected from the side's concertina player
Nigel "Squeezer" Sweet (N"S"S). The
tradition is not mentioned by either Sharp
or Bacon in their published works; however a
set of inserts for Bacon does exist. In
tracking down their origin, I received the
following message by email on 1994 Sep 28:
I don't know if you have seen the actual
Bacon pages yourself, but the tunes were
collected from N"S"S. There are several
theories as to why Amble was left out of
the orginal Bacon edition. The most
popular one is that, following Sharp,
Lionel Bacon felt that the Amble
tradition was not worth inclusion.
Recent research has revealed that the
Amble inserts were lost by Michael
Blandford. It seems that Michael was
forced to leave the Dashwood Arms in
Kirtlington rather quickly, after having
sung The Egg Song there. Unfortunately,
he left behind the only copies of the
Amble-on-Down Bacon inserts. These were
discovered by Ian Harris of the
Kirtlington men. Although Ian thought
the inserts worthless, being a devotee
of a curious sport called "paper chase,"
took them for use in this sport.
When the Amble men themselves emerged
from obscurity, Ian realized that he had
possibly the only written record of the
actual Amble-on-Down tradition. It is in
this way that the Amble Bacon inserts
were brought to the attention of the
morris world.
Having said all this, I think the
proper attribution of the collector of
the Amble tunes should be: Collector
unknown, by way of Michael Blandford,
through Ian Harris. I hope this clears
up any confusion.
Davis Sweet
Newtowne Morris Men
Our copy of the AOD inserts came from
Rebecca Jordan of Lemon & Capers Morris. It
also appears that several of the NTMM can
provide them.
N.B.: I have been told that the original
AOD inserts contain information which does
not appear in the copies that I have. It may
thus be that not all AOD inserts are
complete.
So you want to dance Bledington?
The village of Bledington lies in
Gloucestershire near the border with
Oxfordshire.
During the fall of 1993 our founding
foreman Evan Shepherd returned to broaden
our spectrum of dance by giving us an
intensive Bledington workshop. Starting with
C. Sharp and Bacon as a rough outline we
assembled the following set of notes.
Feel free to use these notes, but please
preserve the info about their provenance.
Also be advised that Seabright does not
follow these notes. In 1994 June we were
further taught by Jim Morrison of the
Albemarle Morris Men, and after he left we
evolved a style which differs from both of
these teachers.
Seabright 1993 Bledington Dance Notes
Notes on specific dances
There is also the sheet music for some
Bledington tunes. See the link on our
cool stuff page
for more details.
The Chingford "Tradition''
During 1994 Geoff Hughes came to the CDSS
Pinewoods dance camp and taught Chingford.
Using the notes from that class, Roger Hayes
started a new team called Purple Sage based
in San Francisco. Purple Sage performs
dances in the Chingford tradition only. The
tunes in the WWW music library are derived
from a nearly illegible FAX of some poor
copies of the music that Roger got from
Geoff. The Chingford tradition was invented
by Geoff Hughes and has been developed by
the Chingford Morris Men. According to Geoff
The music which I gave out at Pinewoods
last year was written out for me by the
Chingford Squire (and musician).
Chingford MM use the N. American tune
published by Karpeles when they perform
the Upton stick dance as published by
her. The Chingford Stick Dance tune is a
variant of a well known Irish tune. All
the other Chingford tunes are variations
of well-known traditional dance and song
tunes.
Note that the dance which is often referred
to as the ``Upton on Severn stick dance'' is
derived from the Chingford MM.
FieldTown
The Field Town morris tradition comes from
the village of Leafield (and probably from
the neighboring villages of Minster Lovell
and Finstock) located in Wychwood Forest in
northwestern Oxfordshire. For much of its
history Leafield was a part of the lands
belonging to the Duke of Marlboro and thus
the Churchill/Spenser family.
Sharp's researches led him to believe
that FieldTown was renowned as one of the
best morris sides in Oxfordshire. He
collected many of the FieldTown dances from
Henry Franklin, a retired police officer.
Even though aged 81, Franklin demonstrated
many of the dances and tunes.
FieldTown is the primary tradition danced
by Berkeley Morris, which is the oldest and
largest team in the Bay Area. They are also
the godparent of many of the other Bay Area
teams.
The Uptown-On-Calhoun Morris
``Tradition''
Were it not for Julia Schult moving from
Minnesota to Santa Cruz I would know
precious little about
Uptown-On-Calhoun.
Show dances at ales
This is a list of the show dances Seabright
has performed at ales. It provides a tidbit
of insight into the evolution and condition
of the team.
- 1992
- Shepherd's Hey (Adderbury)
- 1993
- Princess Royal (Adderbury)
- 1994
- [no California Ale this year]
- 1995
- Bash the Carp (Uptown on Calhoun)
- 1996
- Stick Back (Uptown on Calhoun)
Kirkby Malzeard (sword dance)
- 1997
- Greencoats (Adderbury)
- 1998
- Lillibulero (Bledington)
- 1999
- ?
- 2000
- None
- 2001
- William and Nancy (Bledington)
- 2002
- Sweet Jenny Jones (Adderbury)
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