Dancing for All - Molly Dance Workshops with Milkmaid Molly

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Molly Dance Workshops for Milkmaid Molly Buddies

with Alison Giles from the Cambridge Molly side  Gog Magog

 October 18^th, November 22^nd and December 14^th from 7.30 to 9.30pm

Risbygate Sports Club, Westley Road, Bury St Edmunds. IP33 3RR

The workshops are for any Buddies or potential Buddies who would like to learn new dances or anyone who would like to give Molly dance a go. All are welcome to come along and learn this local tradition.

 Information from This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. or Gill on 01284 767476.

Gog Magog dancing in Ely on Mark Jones Day January 2018

About Milkmaid Molly

Nearly seven years ago, in January 2012, a new Morris dancing side was launched in Bury St Edmunds which filled a gap in the Morris dance family in West Suffolk.  At the time there was a good representation of the dances of the west and northwest of England with Bury Fair and Hageneth dancing the hankies and sticks dances of the Cotswold; Haughley Hoofers, with their clogs, dancing Northwest and Green Dragon’s boisterous stick-wielding Border dance.  The plan was to create a side with a different tradition to avoid standing on the toes of these well-established West Suffolk dancers. So Molly dancing was the choice, Molly being the tradition closest to home, the tradition coming out from the Cambridgeshire Fens.

Gill Bosley and Graham leading the Milkmaid Molly procession at Ely Festival

But there was another difference, this was to be a side that was inclusive: to involve people with disabilities, to have regular dance practices to learn dances and to socialise and to be able to perform alongside other Morris sides, in other words, to enjoy the whole Morris experience.  

Milkmaid Molly (named from the well-known Milkmaid Folk Club) has a membership of 12 Mollies who have learning difficulties and an equal number of Buddies who dance or play with them. Dances are chosen or created to enable all the Mollies to fully participate. The Buddies also learn more complex dances and when these are performed the Mollies provide the instrumental accompaniment with the musicians. A generous donation of £50 from the line-dance group of a previous Buddy was used to purchase more instruments which were given their first airing on 23^rd September at the Bury Hub Fest in Hollow Road.

Milkmaid Molly now have regular bookings to dance every year at Ely Folk Festival and Euston Rural Pastimes and may have been spotted amongst the Morris throng dancing in Bury town centre on Green Dragon’s 25^th anniversary celebration in September 2018.

Gill Bosley

Milkmaid Molly

17^th October 2018

Clodagh Chapman remembered

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Clodagh Chapman who was an original member of Bury Fair (founded in 1977, but originally part of Hageneth Morris) and a founder member of the Haughley Hoofers died in June.  Her funeral will be at the Bury St Edmunds Crematorium in Risby at 9am on Monday 2^nd July 2018.  Colourful clothes and Morris kit should be worn to celebrate her 95years.

Clodagh (back right) with Bury Fair in 1981

(photo from the East Anglian Daily Times December 2010)

I have known Clodagh since her days with Bury Fair and in 2014 I wrote the piece below for the Mardles Magazine and re-publish it today in her memory.  She is the only person I know who created a dance and an embryonic “tradition”.  Like many new dances some worked and some didn’t but Clodagh had one big “hit”; Fires of August which is still being danced today by people who have never heard of Clodagh Chapman.  The Suffolk Weaver is still also danced by Bury Fair but has not been picked up by other sides as much.

I saw “Fires of August” (in the “Buxhall tradition”) performed four days after she died, not in her memory; no-one dancing it knew she had died.  It was danced because it is a good dance (a bit like Brighton Camp, Stanton Harcourt) and can be made into an entertaining race between musicians and dancers.  Few who dance it will know that it was written by Clodagh in the 1980s.  It was originally performed by Bury Fair but has migrated to Little Egypt Morris Men and Westrafelda and maybe others besides.  Hageneth practiced it and I remember performing it once on the Angel Hill in Bury St Edmunds.  Unfortunately we never mastered it and it disappeared from our programme.  You really need to go to the Little Egypt summer solstice event to see it danced with enthusiasm and at a pace which always impresses the audience.

“It’s not just skipping around waving handkerchiefs”- Clodagh Chapman remembers creating dances.

From Mardles Magazine September 2014 

Read more: Clodagh Chapman remembered

Maypole Re-mixed

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Breaking News; - deadline of 11th May extended by EFDSS following Mardles appeal

"I will definitely extend the deadline for applications - we don't want anyone to miss the opportunity.  We really hope we can get a number of young folk dancers to be part of this project". Cassie Tait, Education Manager, English Folk Dance and Song Society

Oxblood Molly Day of Dance 17th March 2018

The Beast from the East was back!  Russian snow!  Just the weather for a day of dance!  There is a saying in Suffolk that “there’s nothing between us and the Urals”.  For once local lore and the Met Office agreed: the sun was not to shine on Oxblood Molly’s 4^th Day of Dance in Halesworth.

Oxblood Molly (photo John Heaser)

Read more: Oxblood Molly Day of Dance 17th March 2018

MORRIS SHORTS - Brief news from the world of Morris - Updated February 2019

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All My Life’s Buried Here – The Story of George Butterworth

The Diss Corn Hall will be showing this new documentary film about George Butterworth, the English composer, Morris dancer and folk song collector who was killed in 1916 at Pozières, France during the Battle of the Somme aged just 31. In the chaos of war Butterworth was buried where he fell and his remains were never subsequently identified.

The film will be shown on Wednesday 27th February 2019 at 10.30am and at 7.30pm.  Following each performance there will be a Q & A session with the director Stewart Hajdukiewicz

A trailer for the film is available at www.georgebutterworth.co.uk

Tickets are available from the Corn Hall box office.

Read more: MORRIS SHORTS - Brief news from the world of Morris - Updated February 2019

Mark Jones Day of Dance 2018

“Me pals were all agog at the kit of the mollies, misfits and glorious champions hailing from Good Easter to the Washes and who got the blood racing on the Mark Jones Day of Dance in January.” 

How many references to Molly sides can you find in the above sentence?  Contrived I know, but somewhere you will find references to all the molly sides who were dancing on that day.  No prizes for getting them all right. 

Some years ago Cotswold Morris and Molly dancer Mark Jones tragically lost his life in a car accident and this Day of Dance, organised by Ouse Washes Molly Dancers in and around Ely, is regularly held in his memory.  With Ouse Washes, gathering to mark the occasion were Gog Magog, Good Easter Molly Gang, Kit Witches, Mepal Molly, Misfits, Old Glory, Oxblood and Seven Champions – Molly dancers all.  One of Mark’s favourite songs was “Rolling Home” and at the first stop this was the music for a massed molly dance “Birds a Building”.

Ouse Washes get things started at the Mark Jones Day of Molly Dance

Read more: Mark Jones Day of Dance 2018