Punch/Volume 147/Issue 3808/Rus in Urbe
No, this is not the Russian ballet. It is the English Folk Dance Society, and their performances at the Royal Horticultural Hall at Westminster the other day showed that the Russian ballet is not to have things all its own way. I am not going to moralise upon the salacious quality of some of the themes of our exotic visitors, but certainly it would be difficult to find a stronger contrast to their ruling passion than is presented by the purity and simplicity of these country dances.
"Sellinger's Round," danced to an air that lulled Titania to sleep all through the winter at the Savoy, was the most popular, with its ring of a dozen dancers, hands joined, running together into the centre of their circle, as if to honour some imaginary deity—possibly Mr. Cecil Sharp, director of the Society, who has col-lected and revived the airs to which they dance.
Then there were the Morris-dances, "Shepherd's Hey" (with nothing about a "nonny-nonny" in it), and "Haste to the Wedding." There might perhaps be a greater propriety in the latter if it were confined to men; but at least it raised no apprehension that anybody was going to "repent at leisure." In the "Flamborough Sword" dance, the men (with no Amazon assistance) raced through the figure and out again, eight of them, armed with bloodless wooden swords—a finely ordered riot.
"Lady's Pleasure," a Morris-jig for two men, lays hold of you at the first bar, and again with a fresh grip and a tighter as the music slows up for the dancers to do their "capers "—all to the music of Mr. Cecil Sharp at the piano and Miss Avril at the fiddle.
The object of The English Folk Dance Society is to teach rather than to perform in public. Hence the rarity of their displays, and the better reason why we should seize, when they come, our chances of assisting at these delightful exhibitions of an art whose revival has done so much to restore to the countryside the unpretentious joys that gave its name to Merrie England.