I am a few weeks into Module 3 which has two parts. Firstly an essay that will look at an aspect of 20th century folk dance development, and a shorter essay that will summarise the historical development of folk dancing.

For the longer essay, I am going to look at the early development of the English Ceilidh band: Oak, Webb’s Wonders, the Old Swan Band and Flowers and Frolics. I will be conducting some interviews or extended email exchanges with key performers, collectors and record producers. I am really looking for to this.

I don’t have that many words to complete the shorter essay. I might struggle to fit in everything such as the Sharp:Neal debate, the ‘invented’ dance problem of the 1930s, Douglas Kennedy’s initiative to try to involve more people into enjoying folk dancing in the 1950s and the influence of the complicated dances of Pat Shaw and Gary Roodman.

Seasoned dancers will probably know something about everything in the last paragraph, except the ‘invented’ dance problem. Maggot Pie published at the beginning of the 1930s contained the first composed collection of folk dances for a 100 years or so. The English Folk Dance Society became very worried about their influence and that more might be composed and dilute Sharp’s Playford publications. The debate centred around could these dances be consider folk dances. After consideration, the EFDSS banned these and other dances from any EFDSS organised event and the EFDSS also produced a list of publications that dances could be taken from and performed. What a state of affairs! At some point that I currently cannot locate, the ban was lifted.