Day 123 - Learn Morris Dancing

Date: May 9th, 2010

Have you ever seen that one guy in the center of the dancefloor doing moves from before he was born with the kind of zeal usually reserved only for lottery winners and people on fire?  Yeah.  That's me.  Except I'm a girl.  So when the nice young man from the flash mob mentioned that he's part of Ann Arbor's Morris Dancing team and maybe I could come join him at a practice, I was understandably concerned.  Partly about my reputation, but mostly for the safety of the people around me.  I was told there would be kicking involved.

I headed over to the practice location, which was one of the paved, open areas on Michigan's central campus, and waited for people to show up.  Being Mother's Day, the practice was a little smaller than usual, but the dances only require between four and six people to do properly so the team doesn't need huge numbers.  As for the dancing itself.  It was fantastic.

Morris dancing is like medieval, supremely more awesome version of DDR.  The steps are repetitive, but in a way that makes them more fun, not less.  The challenge isn't in getting a single rotation of steps correct - its in maintaining your footwork for the whole dance.  It didn't seem all that hard until they added forward and backward motion, spins, patty-cakes, accordion music and moving in a circle.  That is a LOT to remember.  And the dance they taught me was the easy one.

I feel the whole excursion was a success, having not maimed or killed anyone with my gigantic left feet.  In actuality, after a little while, I was managing the steps decently well.  I can't say I was anywhere close to the proper form - there's a jolly sort of hopping that I doubt I paid proper homage to.  What a fantastic afternoon though.  I felt a real sense of accomplishment at getting close to getting it right though.

Now... significantly more impressive was the fine footwork of the actual Ann Arbor Morris team.  They were gracious enough to let me film one of their more complicated dances so I could give y'all a peek at what some real Morris dancing looks like.  Its delightful.