Here are "reprints" of the fine articles written in different publications about the MossyBacks. Also see the References
section.
Skagit Valley Herald reports "Dancers display bizarre but traditional style"
"They looked like hallucinogenic chimney sweeps, like images from a fever dream where Charles Dickens meets Dr. Seuss and they dance the hootchy-kootchy."
From the annual fall tour. This year we were joined by the Vancouver Morris Men and Tiddley Cove Morris both from Vancouver, B.C. Canada. The MossyBacks were dancing border morris.
University Herald,
Seattle Washington.
The Morris Men: Dancing on the far side.
"Imagine Fred Astaire clad entirely in white, except for scores of red, yellow and green ribbons and some red high top tennis shoes, leaping off a curb with a New Guinea tribesman."
From a tour in the University District in Seattle. Great quotes from the team. This is a excellent and entertaining article, please read!!
The Seattle Times,
Seattle Washington.
Fat Tuesday revelry simmers in anticlimax
"...who roamed the area, dancing like wood nymphs and waving napkins in the air to accordion music. ... Their leader, Bob Greco, said the dances were 'olde English.' He's from The Bronx, NY."
The MossyBacks dance at the Pioneer Square Fat Tuesday celebration the year
after it was shut down due to riots.
 "Dancers display bizarre but traditional style" |
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| Dance groups pay visit to Women's Art Showcase | |
By PETER KELLEY
Staff Writer
MOUNT VERNON
The Women's Art Showcase was moving along nicely in the Skagit Valley College cafeteria, with quiet manners and muffled conversation
Then the Morris dancers showed up. In charged the men, about two dozen of them, puffing and windblown, their faces painted black, blue and yellow, their hair dyed or under elaborately feathered hats. They wore suit coats festooned with ribbons and flowers, or entire costumes of tatters and plumes.
They looked like hallucinogenic chimney sweeps, like images from a fever dream where Charles Dickens meets Dr. Seuss and they dance the hootchy-kootchy.
Then came the women, about a dozen, in flowing skirts and flowers, ribbons and bells. Bells everywhere.
The men took the center of the cafeteria as art lovers pulled back in hesitation. They launched into a dance of controlled abandon, smashing foot long sticks on the floor and in midair, stomping, twirling and chanting. Costumed players accompanied them on concertina, banjo and a plump-sounding tuba.
"'There was a little fella arid he grew no bigga so they put him in a wild west show!" they grunted. [continued top of next column]
"He tumbled through a winda and he broke his little finga and he couldn't play the old ban-JO! Too-ra-loo-ra-li. Oh, he couldn't play the old ban-JO." Other lyrics were more bawdy.
As the women dancers took stage for their own shuffles arid kicks Saturday, dancers Norman Stanfield of Vancouver, B.C., and Bob Greco of Seattte - who organized the tour - explained the chaos.
Morris dancing, Greco said, dates back hundreds of years to England, especially along that country's border with Wales.
"It was already old by the 1400 ?s," Greco said.
He said the gathering at the college comprised three "sides," or dancing groups. the Vancouver Morris Men; the Mossy Back Morris Men of Seattle; and the Tiddley Cove Morris Dancers, the women, also from SeattIe [ed. note- correctly it's Vancouver, B.C.].
Stanfield said Morris dancing was a way to solicit coins from passersby along the streets or in pubs, for coal miners in the hard winters between jobs. Back then, there were no female Morris dancers, he said, but times have changed.
Despite the jubilance of these dances,
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Stanfield said, Morris dancing was viewed - by dancer and audience- as somewhat shameful, the clowning of the desperately poor. The black faces don't have the meaning they might in American culture, where minstrel shows were once immensely popular. These faces represent the dust of the coal mines, or more generally, the filth of a working class life. "Instead of blue collar, it's black face," Stanfield said. "It's very much like that." Greco, who with his wife is soon to move to Skagit County, said the dancers have been here before, hoofing and whooping in the tulip fields last spring. And they'll be back. In between numbers, Tiddley Cove Morris dancers June Harman and Miriam Arnall talked about the dancing and how they got involved. "I came to it by accident. I emigrated from England to Canada. Back in England, you normally move out of a pub when the dancers move in," Arnall said, chuckling. Harman agreed that Morris' origins are not wholly pure. |
"It's ritual, not social. It was vaguely disreputable and threatening, so the disguises are important," More stomping, twirling, chanting and kicking ensued, and then the Morris dancers packed up and went their way. From the college, in the rain, they went to the Skagit River Brewery for lunch and revelry, then the Mt. Glen Retirement Community, and then to La Conner. After the dancers' breezy departure, the artists resumed discussing their work with interested shoppers and browsers. The Women's Art Showcase is SVC's annual event to celebrate northwest women artists, particularly those from the Skagit Valley. The featured artist was Anne Martin McCool, whose paintings were also embossed onto cards and T-shirts. A host of other artists and craftswomen were present. On display were dreamlike watercolors by Karn Kenaston - who lives in Seattle but paints local scenes - and Esther McLatchy, and extravagant handmade felt hats by Shannon Good of Mount Vernon. |
Reformatted to better fit the on-line media. Copyright Skagit Valley Herald .
The Morris Men: Dancing on the far side
| Group puts a modern twist on ancient Druid dances |
By JOHNNY DODD
Picture Baryshnikov swinging a tree limb on North 40th Street. Imagine Fred Astaire clad entirely in white, except for scores of red, yellow and green ribbons and some red high top tennis shoes, leaping off a curb with a New Guinea tribesman.
Throw in a screeching fiddle, some rhythmic moanings from a concertina and you'll have an idea of who was dancing in the University District last Wednesday night - The Mossyback Morris Men.
The Morris men perform a ridiculously complex series of dances, whose steps are based partially on fertility rituals from the ancient Druids - only with a slightly modern twist. For hundreds of years such dances were performed during agricultural festivals held in small English villages.
Today, the 20-member group -nearly half of whom work at the Boeing Co. as engineers and programmers - do much of their dancing from pub to pub and on busy city streets. And though the setting has changed somewhat, their attire, made up of jingling bells, white pants, red suspenders. shoes, red kerchiefs and baseball hats, is a symbol of their ancient past. [continued top of next column]
"Sure, I suppose you could say the white we wear is a symbol of purity, although the idea of a pure Morris Dancer is something of an oddity," said Fremont resident Ken Smith, team captain.
Although its origins have been traced back to 12th century Spain, the folk dance was almost killed by the Industrial Revolution when the lure of jobs and money pressured many to leave their villages in search of work in city factories.
By the turn of the century, however, the dance was eventually revived and began meandering through other European cultures. By the mid-1970s it had attracted the attention of a small group of Americans. Smith estimates that nearly 2,000 people in this country perform the dance. The Mossyback Morris Men team, begun in 1979, is one of two Morris Dancing teams in Seattle.
"Sure, I was a little self conscious at first walking around in all those ribbons and stuff, but you get used to it," said Fremont resident David Trine, 35. "The toughest part is learning the difference between your left foot and your right."
Trine had been a folk dancer for several years before he learned to Morris Dance. "I've done all types . . . swing and modern, but if I had to give them all up and just keep one, this would be it."
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A group of Mossyback Morris Men cavort and leap about on 40th Avenue Northeast In the U-District last Wednesday evening. Morris dancing was performed for hundreds of years In English country villages, but thanks to groups like the Morris Men, it can now be seen in pubs and streets around Seattle.
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For other team members, not as adept in the pastime, the decision to hop around in front of strangers came after some deliberation. "When a friend asked me to do this, I told him I couldn't dance; but when he reminded me that I like to drink beer and have a good time, I said I'd give it a try," Ravenna resident Hank Lieber said. "The toughest part about all this is trying not to get your fingers smashed." Smashed fingers, a concussion and broken teeth are a few of the injuries resulting from the use of the thick maple branches team members often slam together while dancing. "The sticks make a loud noise and a great show," said Smith, who's been hit in the head three times. The bashing sticks also lend a bit of good-natured phallic symbolism to the routines which Smith described as sometimes almost "x-rated." Other props such as feather dusters, chalk, a miniature cricket paddle and an inflated pig bladder are occasionally used in their performances. Last week's outing in the University District served as a celebration of sorts for Trine's upcoming marriage. "What intense psychological need has caused you to resort to such a long-term commitment in the form of matrimony," Claude Ginsburg asked Trine while team members prepared themselves for their upcoming performances with several pints of ale. [continued top of next column] |
"My only advice is that you always make sure she knows who wears the bells in the family." Trine shook his head in agreement and filed up the stairs to the intersection of North 40th Street and University Way Northeast, where he and the rest of group would begin their first dances of the night. Pedestrians stopped, windows in nearby buildings were opened and people stared in disbelief as the men hopped and cavorted about in the west-bound lane of the street. At one point, a dancer spun out in front of a passing Datsun, but the car stopped in time. "What's with these guys . . . is this some new type of cult?" an elderly man asked the woman standing beside him. "I've seen lots of different type of folk dancing but nothing like this," said another bystander, Irene Pruzan, visiting Seattle from St Paul, Minn. And then, just slowly ant nonchalantly as the event began it was all over. "Thanks far watching us" Smith announced to the crowd "If you have nothing better to do follow us up to Noggins (a nearby pub) and buy us a beer."
This article appeared in the University Herald on Wednesday, July 19th, 1989. |
Reformatted to better fit the on-line media. Copyright University Herald .
