Step Change - New Views on Traditional Dance

Edited by Georgina Boyes

A study of traditional dance that brings in previously unregarded types of dance and challenges the assumptions of the early folk dance revival. Step Change introduces the enthusiast and the general reader alike to seven views, some controversial, that reflect this new approach:

• English sword dancing and the European context
• Ladies’ clog dance contests of the 1890s
• Ownership of the Britannia Coco-Nut dances of Bacup, Lancashire
• The tradition of ‘Molly’ dances of East Anglian farm workers and its reinvention in the 1970s
• The colourful life of nineteenth century morris ‘fool’ William ‘Old Mettle’ Castle
• The folk dance revival as seen through the Abbey School novels of Elsie J. Oxenham
• A fresh look at the achievements of folk dance collector, Maud Karpeles

Published Francis Boutle Publishers 2001