Our own “coming on” dance for 6 or 8 dancers.  The title says it all (if you understand Devonian).  This one builds up slowly and ends with a full frontal finish.  Fortunately, we normally manage to keep our clothes on though.  This was written by Gozzer, but put into danceable shape by a lot of work from all at the first couple of practices.

A dance we were given that originates with The Ironmen.  We have adapted it quite a bit to fit our style.  This dance always features a longer and finely carved stick which is our ashpole.  A dance for 8 dancers.

Based on the traditional dance notes, this is a dance for 4 dancers.

One of the early dances written by Gozzer and named after the village where we first practiced (Coombeinteignhead, Devon).  This is a dance for 4 dancers, but is often now performed for two sets of 4, with the band in the middle.

Richard wrote this one and his only explanation is that he wanted to bring in a dance with a different number of dancers.  So here we have a dance for 5.  Once linked with the tune of the same name, this took on a life of it’s own.  There is more rough and tumble in this dance than any of our others and we probably break most sticks doing this one as well!  Bear baiting has become illegal in this country, but no one says you can’t bait a morris man!

Originally written by Richard and since adapted into the dance we do today by Roy who says he just kept in the best bits and cut it down to a short dance so the old boys could have a rest.  That was nice of him.  The tune gives this one it’s name: Rochdale Coconut.

This dance started out as an attempt to dance Pershore, but we found that the musicians were put off by the big sticks flying around their ears when all they had to defend themselves was a melodeon or a drumstick.  So Gozzer used some of the basic ideas from the traditional dance, but with 4 dancers, all with sticks.  Now the dance has come full circle because we often perform it with two sets of four and swap sets whilst we go through it.  Guess what, the band now like to perform in the middle, between the two sets!  (So long as we keep the sticking to ourselves of course).  Haccombe is a tiny hamlet close to Coombeinteignhead, Devon.

Another dance written by Gozzer and kicked into shape by the team.  This dance is often known as “tut assholes dance”.  Many teams have a dance which refers to the hunting of this animal, but of course the hare was often not really a hare at all.

A traditional dance that was first taught to us at an early workshop weekend we put on.  We do it our way, which means we sing a rude bit at the end.

Mostly written by Gozzer, although others helped, especially Colin Riggs, one of our founder members who has since left.  This dance was taken to Stone the Crows by Murray Riggs (Colin’s father, who was also a founder member) and has been taught to many ever since.  There are two main versions of this dance being danced around the world now and the main differences depend on whether you learnt it from Stone the Crows or us.  It can be danced in multiple of 3 dancers.  The most powerful magic is from having three sets of three. The oringinal notes for this dance are often requested. You can download them Here, but if you use this dance please credit it to us. 

A traditional dance from the village of the same name, where they used to like to keep it simple.  They had “The Stick Dance” (from which we adapted ours) and “The Hankie Dance”.  And we now spend so long giving them all fancy names!

What if morris dancing had existed in Jamaica?  What if the great Bob Marley had influenced it’s development and style, especially the music it was danced to?  This dance was collected in a parallel universe in which this has happened.  Reggae morris!  It’s great fun!

The inhabitants of Widecombe in Devon are said to have missed out on certain social refinements, such as handkerchiefs and use pieces of wood instead.  So this is a stick dance and that means the team will start to breath easier again as they get a little worried about waiving hankies around and stuff like that.  Murray Riggs, brought us an idea from a workshop he had attended which involved two single line sets of four, at 90° to each other and crossing in the middle.  The dance is based on the traditional Brimfield dance again, but requires a little bit of fancy work to avoid collisions in the middle.  We picked up on this and adapted it for 6 dancers as well.

Gozzer wrote this one to go with a good tune that Di found and he thought we should dance to.

A dance for eight in which the dancers weave all sorts of intricate patterns around each other. This was written for a former member’s wedding and is now mostly performed at weddings and handfastings.