dance

By Lucy Wright

You might not have heard of it, but ‘Dusking’ is the next big morris dancing craze to hit your side-streets, woodlands and waste-grounds. Look to your left, now look to your right: at least one of those people will be going out Dusking this year. Or at least I’d love that to be the case! Let me explain…

It was the evening of May 1st this year, and the morris dancing community online were reflecting on another year’s ‘Maying’. It’s a popular modern custom to ‘dance the sun up’ at dawn on May morning and this year a record 1500 people had reportedly set their alarms for stupid o’clock to go out and greet the summer. I, myself had braved the centre of Stevenage – where I was staying for work – alone, and wearing a hastily thrown together kit, in the first act of what I would go on to call ‘hedge morris dancing’ – or morris for people don’t have, or can’t be with a team of morris siblings, but still feel the call to dance. Solitary, self-initiated morris, endlessly adaptable and open to all, the term ‘hedge’ is borrowed from the unsanctioned hedge schools of 18^th/19^th century Ireland and Rae Beth’s famous book, Hedge Witch. The subsequent interest I received on social media, predominantly from people who had never morris danced before but were excited to give it a go, set me on a course which I’m still following (and loving), creating art and resources to help people get started with the tradition, while hopefully smashing a few barriers and misconceptions along the way. You can read a full article about ‘hedge morris dancing’ here on Tradfolk.

So, back to this May Day evening. It had been another successful year: the sun had risen, as hoped, and the summer was now assured. A post on the Facebook group, ‘How Many Morris Dancers are on Facebook?’ caught my eye. Peter Austin asked, ‘Does any team invoke the practice of what I’ll refer to as ‘Dusking’… i.e dancing at sunset at the start of winter to balance the yearly cycle’. Several people had replied to note that some morris sides in the southern hemisphere habitually dance the sun down on or around May 1^st and a few people referenced novels by Terry Pratchett, but overall, it seemed apparent that marking the start of winter was less commonplace or celebrated than its summertide opposite. 

This is perhaps not totally surprising. The promise of a northern hemisphere summer, with its blue skies, long warm days (at least in theory) and lush, verdant nature, seems a lot more attractive than the dark nights and cold, dreich weather that characterises the winter months. I always sort of dread the second half of the year, hit with a mild seasonal gloom around the same time that my big coat comes out of the wardrobe, which only lifts when I begin to see the rowan buds bursting outside my window again. But I’d like to learn to see the winter differently, to find more things to appreciate about the shorter, darker days – like the gifts of rest, replenishment and reflection that Katherine May speaks about in her book, Wintering. Perhaps a folk tradition could help me to feel more positive – even excited – about the season ahead.

Here’s the thing. I’m an artist (I used to be an academic, but I drifted). And as everyone knows, good artists copy but great artists steal. So I pinched the name ‘Dusking’ (thanks, Peter!) and ran with it, my mind racing. What would it be like to get a whole crowd of dancers out at sunset on October 31st (the date agreed upon to be the appropriate counterpart to May Day)? And what if that crowd included a small army of new and misfit ‘hedge’ morris dancers, like me? What could I do to help make the prospect of taking part as appealing and accessible to as many people as possible? I set about gathering resources – and making new costumes (very important). The Dusking project was born.

But what’s it all about? I’ve been calling it a ‘100% invented tradition’ but that’s not entirely right. There is precedence for dancing the sun down, although I wasn’t that well-acquainted with this when I first got excited about the idea. ‘Dusking’ itself seems to be a new coinage, but the custom has other names: the Dark Morris, the Anti-Morris, ‘Dancing the Sun Down’, and a range of references, from art and popular culture to the ‘annals’ of morris dancing history.

A brief history of Dusking

Perhaps the best-known representation of ‘dancing the sun down’ can be found in the writings of Terry Pratchett. In his 1991 Discworld novel, Reaper Man, we are first introduced to the ‘other morris’, later renamed the ‘Dark Morris’, who are described as a team of six men dressed in black who go out to dance at the cusp of winter – performing in silence, with no bells or music and no spectactors – their ritual the spur for completing the yearly cycle of death and rebirth. 

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