Institutions and Ideology in the Dissemination of Morris Dances in the Northwest of England

Abstract

In northwest England, during the early nineteenth century, morris dancing was performed annually by young adult men in the context of a procession which called attention to the health, wealth, number, and strength of a community's menfolk. After the First World War, morris dancing could still be seen as a form of public display in the region, but it had also become the province of children of both sexes. This age and gender revision coincided with an apparent spread of morris dances within the area.' On the surface, continuity and expansion in the re-enactment of traditional dance forms may signal evidence of cultural stability. Yet, as Cohen has noted (1985: 91-92), continuity in the outward manifestation of public customary activities may disguise widespread economic and social changes within a given society. Seemingly small shifts in the texts of music and movement activities may well reflect developments at a national and international level as new hierarchies consolidate control through the operation of cultural hegemony. Traditional dances may well be utilized for ideological purposes, particularly when control of their dissemination is appropriated by institutions operating as part of the state apparatus (see Althusser 1984). The revision of the age and gender of morris dancers in northwest England poses questions, not only with regard to the localised symbolic function of the genre, but also to a wider interpretive framework in which codes of movement activity are related to age and gender at a national level. It also raises questions of the historical role of dancing as an instrument of control of the children of the English working class and contributes to discussion of the marginalisation of dancing within English society. During the nineteenth century, whether consciously or otherwise, creators and performers of morris dances in northwest England merged certain movement systems and codes of bodily behavior; the effect was to underline an emergent perspective on the body as an 'object and target of power' (Foucault 1991: 136). Morris dancing became one of several physical activities regarded as appropriate for children of both sexes to perform in a number of institutionalized contexts. Consideration must be given to why morris dancing was selected in an age when the body was increasingly subjected to a discipline which rendered it obedient and useful

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