‘This Girl Can’ Morris Dance is an ongoing collaborative project to explore and document the hidden histories of girls’ carnival morris dancing from the Northwest of England
Highly competitive and characterised by precise, synchronous routines with pom-poms (or ‘shakers’) executed to pop music, girls’ morris functions at a remove from the more widely known morris performances of the English folk revival…
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I’ve written a handful of articles about girls’ morris dancing and its histories, some of which can be accessed below.
'Girls’ Carnival Morris Dancing and Contemporary Folk Dance Scholarship'
Folklore, vol. 128, no. 1 (2017), pp. 157 – 174
‘Making Traditions: Girls’ Carnival Morris Dancing and Material Practice’
Yearbook for Traditional Music, vol. 49, no. 1 (2017), pp. 26 – 48
‘Girls’ Carnival Morris Dancing and the Politics of Participation’
The Histories of the Morris in Britain, Vaughan Williams Memorial Library Press, 2018, pp. 295 – 312
‘“Sequins, bows and pointed toes”: girls’ carnival morris dancing and difference in the English folk arts’
Routledge Companion to English Folk Performance, eds Peter Harrop and Steve Roud [forthcoming, 2021]
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If you do not have institutional access and would like me to send you a copy, please drop me a line…