~ Thursday, June 17, 2004 ~

...and *that* was Morris Dancing

I'm happy to report that the Wayward Youth 2004 tour was wildly successful. There are one or two pictures from it up on Wayward Andrew's site, if you want to see what we did. Rumour has it there will eventually be narrative comments too. Meanwhile, for the Morris dancers who read this, here are the dances we did.

Cotswold Dances

Ascot-Under-Wychwood: Trunkles, Mary's Dance, Buns in the Oven (The latter two are Ring O' Bells dances, which made sense, because including me, we had four members of Ring O' Bells with us.)

Badb'y: Donkey Riding, Shepherd's Hey, and Tossing (Tossing was like shooting, except we tossed instead. And I know what you're thinking, and no, we did *not* throw our sticks at the musicians on the last chorus.)

Bampton-in-the-Bush: Highland Mary (This was the mass dance we did when we were finishing a stand and dancing with whatever other team showed up to dance with us.)

Bledington(?): Monk's March (I played for this one too...I never did get all the different capers up to performance level while we were learning the dances at Lake George.)

Ducklington: Lollipop Man (We performed this at the Glenn Echo contradance near Washington, D.C. Snatch capers on a nice bouncy wooden floor...yum.)

Upton-upon-Severn: The Stick Dance (Not really a Cotswold dance originally, but it's been Cotswoldized since. I like how there are, apparently, two dances in the Upton tradition, and one's a hanky dance and the other's a stick dance. Upton serves as a lovely little model for morris dancing as a whole, in which, as everyone from the careful student to the casual observer knows, there are two dances, the hanky dance and the stick dance. It's kind of like Irish music, which has two tunes, the reel and the jig.)

Non-Cotswold Dances

Border: Four Lane End (I love this one)

Lichfield: Vandals (for 4, because we didn't officially learn it, and there weren't eight who already knew the dance)

Rapper: Velocirapper's dances #3 and #4 (we had four former members of Velocirapper with us, and one girl who used to dance rapper with another team and a second girl who learned it in two days). I played accordion for these so I can't really describe them in much detail, but they were really cool to watch, and sometimes so interesting that I had to not watch so I wouldn't mess up, even while playing Swallowtail, a very simple jig.

Current Music: Plain Capers, John Kirkpatrick

~ prattled by Miriam at 4:36 p.m. [+] ~ 2 comment

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More News

Poet and Sprite are engaged. I'm not quite surprised, but I'm so glowingly happy for them, I hardly know what to do with myself. The marriage is set for "September or October". Wow, that's soon. I guess I'll just have to fly back West to attend the wedding (oh darn) and in the meantime, prepare the blessing Poet asked me to offer.

~ prattled by Miriam at 12:18 a.m. [+] ~ 0 comment

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I can't wait.

[The] (Rabbi) D[e]an [of] A[dmissi](r)ons(on)* left a message on my cell phone on Friday afternoon. I listened to it as we (= the Wayward Youths) were stopping briefly as we drove down from Albany and NYC. The gist? I passed. I start Mechinah in August. I'm going out of my mind with excitement. This news justifies my entire year here.

Oh, and Lake George is devastatingly beautiful and the Wayward crew are a lovely bunch, but we were practicing for most of yesterday and today, and now my shins hurt. On the other hand, I'm going to rabbinical school. Wow.

Current Music: Ca Ira, Baguette Quartette

*for name, remove bracketed bits; for title, remove parantheticals

~ prattled by Miriam at 11:02 p.m. [+] ~ 1 comment

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quickly now

I went to the Marlboro Morris Ale with Ring O' Bells over the weekend and I had a fantastic time. The Outside Capering Crew kicks my vestigial coccyx. Possibly the best morris dancing ever. They get extra points for being nice, teaching us some elementary bacca pipe dancing on Sunday morning, and doing a skit involving people doing the holding-the-broom-and-jumping-over-it trick with rubber chickens. Wow. The Mad Bellowsqueezer and the Oaken Whistler both made my Saturday and Sunday nights by letting me sit in with them (not that I really gave them a choice) and giving bits of advice about my buttonwork while they matched chops and made gleeful intricate music. Oaken Whistler let me borrow the rather ostentatious sparkly blue and white Fifi, since Bethena was at Main Squeeze having her bellows patched. Sometimes it seems like there's not enough music happening in my life, and those nights were a particularly euphoric way to break the fast. To increase the goodness, Wayward Andrew gave me another Morris-accordion lesson on Monday morning shortly before everyone packed up and left. I so very much want to just get past the annoying I-can't-play-this-thing part. Oh, and also Ring O' Bells danced pretty well, I think. I was put in two of the three show dances, which surprised me, because I'm such a new member, but Foreman mentioned something about rewarding good attendance, and I *have* been there for almost all the practices. So that was fun.

Yesterday I went to RRC and retook my Hebrew test. It was really hard, and I'm kind of nervous. The deal is that they'll let me into the Mechinah (preparatory) year if I pass this test, which means 6 years instead of five, but I know I did rather poorly (mostly nerves) on the oral section, and I missed things on the rabbinic Hebrew translation section...the modern Hebrew translation bit I didn't finish. File Hebrew in the same category as accordion. I think the rest of it went well, though, especially my own writing piece, which I'd marginally prepared beforehand...I'm supposed to hear on Friday. Six straight hours of testing is too much.

Today I'm leaving for the Wayward Youths of Morris tour, with Bethena in tow, and she needs to be picked up from Main Squeeze at 11 am sharp tomorrow, after I finish doing laundry and drop off a housing application for an apartment in Wyncote with Jarah's sister, who will give it to Jarah, with whom I will probably be living next year, assuming I pass the test, but I don't have to think about that right now because the test is done and now I can enjoy dancing with wonderful people.

I should know better than to think I can post for the first time in a fortnight and keep it short and quick. I throw up my hands in resignation.

Current Music: Let's Turn Gay, Blue Saracens

~ prattled by Miriam at 3:17 a.m. [+] ~ 2 comment

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