Discover Morris Dances

 

English Traditional Ritual Dance

 

England has a rich heritage of traditional dance and the ritual element (as opposed to social dance) is often referred to as Morris Dancing. The dances are intended to be displayed to an audience and, nowadays, performances occur throughout the year by enthusiasts focused on keeping the dance traditions alive.

Morris dancing is a good exercise and a social pastime. There are clubs all over the world often using a common set of dances so you can meet like-minded friends and even join in when you're away from home.

With this website, you can learn more about Morris Dancing, its background and how to do it, even if you have no knowledge of the subject when you start. You can obtain full-length dance tunes either as digital downloads or as a physical CD, click on the CD cover, below right. You can also get some suggestions on costume and how to stage a performance.

Below is a list of the current dances for which music and/or dance instructions are available. The dances are graded from the straightforward (*) to the most complicated (*****). Usually, you can simplify the figures to reduce the grading by a star or so.

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Currently available resources, dances and music are shown below. If the dance name appears as a link, you can click on it to go straight to the instructions. Click the ✔ for a sample of the tune where available (new tab will open).
The music can be obtained from here >>