Today I have been speaking with members of the Royal Scottish County Dance Scotland about Dance-Intensity.

Dance-Intensity is a concept to measure how much dancing a person, couple or couples perform during a dance. The amount of dancing varies between position: normally an active couple will dance more than an inactive couple (in EFDSS terms the First couple generally dances more than the Second couple, but not always and sometime it’s equal). In Scottish dance, the set set-up and progression style is different than that employed by the EFDSS.

I will use this concept in my paper to measure the change of Dance-Intensity between Karpeles 1931 description and the one described by Nibs Matthews in 1972. Karpeles’ Dance-Intensity was 80% while Matthews’ 1972 description it had increased to 95%.

The maths works like this. The number of bars a person/couple/couples dance is divided by the number of music bars, multiplied by 100 to give a percentage. Using Nottingham Swing as an example, and concentrating on the first couple. The first couples activity is equal at 12 bars, and the dance is 16 bars long. So 24/32 x 100 = 75% [Actual dancing time per dancer/actual music length per round = Dance-Intensity]

Dances where everybody in moving all the time, for example Childgrove or Newcastle, Dance- Intensity would be 100% for all dancers once through the dance. Nottingham Swing would return 62.5% Dance Intensity, while Levi Jackson Rag returns 81.25%. (Remember! Men stand still for 4 bars in a full Ladies’ Chain! However, if you determine that men are always moving in the chain, it increases to 87.5%) .

Watch out, it good fun and addictive.

I have been reviewing my presentation content today.

I have searched the Vaughan Williams Memorial Library, and have asked the archivist at the Society of Folk Dance Historians in the USA to identify Morpeth Rant dance descriptions. I have now identified 8 published descriptions of the Morpeth Rant that I will use. I will be using Maud Karpeles 1931 description in Twelve Traditional Country Dances, and 8 others to describe the  various recorded changes until 2005.  Each description identifies another ‘added part’ to the dance.

I am surprised that I found few description of the dance. The dance was described in the Community Dances Manual by Douglas Kennedy in 1947, and it still appeared in the most recent edition (2005 revised ed. by Les Barclay and Ian Jones) with an updated description based on Kennedy’s.

Marcia Dixon-Brown of Newcastle wrote to Maud Karpeles in 1925 detailing the dance, her letter can be found in the Vaughan Williams Memorial Library. I can find no other detailed description of the dance described by a Northumbrian.

Although the Folk Archive Resource North East website shows some excellent manuscript Morpeth Rant tunes, it only has one dance description of the Morpeth Rant. It is exactly the same as that described by Douglas Kennedy in the Community Dances Manual part 2, published by the English Folk Dance and Song Society in 1947.

I have been working on the structure of my presentation as well as getting content.

• Have got copyright clearance to use historical images from the EFDSS.
• Got membership stats of the EFDS.
• Considering if I should include a practical during my presentation This would allow to show the difference between a polka and the rant step. This would be good to do and today I vote to include the practical.
• I have be considering how to describe the polka and rant step. I need to describe it for the presentation and for the conference paper I need to prepare for publication and course requirements. It’s so difficult to describe on paper.