Emily's dancing page

or, What I do to get exercise

Dancing is one of the most important ways I keep myself happy and healthy. It's social time, it's exercise time, and it's meditation time, if you get the right partner or group together.

Morris dancing, a traditional English dance form, is one of the types of dancing I spend lots of time on.

I have a personal theory that Morris dancing is an early version of the modern Rave...

Periodically I go and spend the weekend with a dozen or so Morris teams, and dance and drink and dance and hang out and drink and, well, you get the idea. Dancing like that occasionally helps keep me sane and focused, though I'll get back from the weekend much more sleep-deprived than I started: we usually forget to sleep until we're ready to fall over. It's somewhat like a Rave, but without any drugs other than alcohol and sleep-deprivation, and with accordion music instead of techno.

The Morris team that I founded is Fault Line Morris. We don't have a website yet, but we're practicing and performing in this, our second season. If you're available on Tuesday evenings, and you're a serious dancer who's willing to learn Sherborne, please send me email and ask about joining us!

The White Rats are the other Morris team I'm a member of right now, though I'm taking a break at the moment so I can concentrate on Fault Line Morris.

Both groups offer classes so if you want to learn but haven't yet, you don't need to try to figure things out while you're on the dance floor in the middle of a crowd. Taking a class is recommended, if you don't already know the dances- it makes the dance a lot more fun for you and for the people you dance with!

Ye Gaskell Occasional Dance Society

The dance I've known about longest is the Gaskell Ball, which happens every two months. The website has all the details about upcoming dances. This is a good way to learn how to waltz and polka, though it's a bit more sink-or-swim than a beginner might be happy with without the pre-dance lesson, held the evening of the ball.

Period Events and Entertainments Re-Creation Society

On the first Saturday of every month there's also a PEERS ball, also enormous amounts of fun. I have been lucky enough to be one of the volunteers who portrays theme characters for the balls. I portrayed Arwen Evenstar in the February 2002 Middle Earth Ball, and Iphigenia in the September 2001 Ball that Launched a Thousand Ships (set in Ancient Greece). We try to have fun as well as be historically correct- the three of us who played the daughters of Agamemnon sang a song which was a parody of a Gilbert and Sullivan tune from The Mikado.

Friday Night Waltz

There's a newer group that has started up in the past year or so, with open dancing for everybody, and lessons in the early part of the evenings. Friday Night Waltz takes place on the Peninsula on the first Friday of the month, and in the East Bay on the third Friday of the month. They have canned music, but that just means that the DJs can have fun with the tune selections. And they do!

Many of these same wacky people dance at the Great Dickens Christmas Fair. In case you aren't familiar with the Dickens Fair, we try to recreate a small slice of London as Dickens would have known it, with places and people that were created in his various stories. The dancing takes place at the Fezziwig Warehouse, where Mr. Fezziwig is hosting a Christmas party for his family, friends, and all his employees (including a young Ebeneezer Scrooge!). I will say, once you've danced all day at the Fezziwig Warehouse, you don't complain as much after only a four-hour dance!