Winster Morris Dancers invite locals to join weekly practice sessions and upcoming workshop
Most Tuesday evenings from October through to April you can find our group of women and men, young and old, going through the music, steps and figures of our dances. It's certainly healthy physical effort, but it's also fun and teamwork learning the moves and nailing the key things for performance. It might also be one of the evenings with a social break included, sharing tea/coffee/cake or a glass of wine from one of our twinned groups in France, Germany or Italy.
We are Winster Morris Dancers and we're inviting people to come and have a go. It's on Tuesdays at 20.00 in the village hall and it won't cost you anything. The Burton Institute, West Bank, Winster DE4 2DQ.
There will be a one-off daytime workshop as well, on Saturday 4th October to have a go at our style of morris. It's at 13.00 at the Whitworth Institute, Darley Dale DE4 2EQ -part of the 'Health and Wellbeing' event that day.
The first taster session on a Tuesday evening is on 14th October at 20.00. Other autumn and winter Tuesdays following that will be just as good though, because we want to be helpful and we always like to meet new people. There are Tuesday 21st and 28th October, the 11th,18th and 25th of November and the 2nd and 9th December.
We perform special dances from Derbyshire, Winster-style specifically, because in our village some dances have been handed down since the nineteenth century. We have modern ones in the mix as well, dances we've written recently to pick up on moves or on tunes that particularly appeal to us. We've found a dance from Taddington too and have taught it to schoolchildren there. Showing other people how to do the dances is important to us. Local schools and community groups are invited to get in touch about that.
We dance and practice with live music and we're blessed with musicians who are the envy of lots of other dance groups we meet up with. Passing on their knowledge and skills is an important thing for them, at evening practices and in occasional workshops. There are sometimes opportunities for them to play at ceilidhs, help with soundtracks and play for other dancers. Traditional acoustic instruments like concertinas, fiddles, melodeons and recorders are used.
More or less from May through to the end of September each year we concentrate on going out as a team and dancing in public. There's usually a gig to go to every two or three weeks if you want. Performing happens both at events by invitation and informally in places we choose ourselves (rather like street theatre). We go abroad doing it and we bring foreign teams here as our guests. Everywhere you get to meet people and entertain them, just for the fun of it.
Find out more at www.winstermorrisdancers.org and on our Facebook page. To speak about details, phone or text 07434-950854 (Rich), 07976-824511 (Lorna), 07740-663059 ( Mike), or 07704-388874 (Celia).