Beginners’ Guides:
English Folk Dance

Dances are usually performed with sticks, handkerchiefs, or clapping and in ’sets’ of six dancers.

Or as a ’jig’ - a showpiece dance performed solo, or as a ‘double jig’ for two or more dancers.

Some teams have a hobby-horse or other hobby-animal to interact with the audience.

Comic dances, broom dances, and bacca pipes jigs (a dance for one or two people, performed over crossed clay pipes) are occasionally seen, and some dances include singing.

Champion jig dancers: Dom Moss, Hammersmith Morris Men & Ben Moss, Great Western Morris

5000 Morris Dancers, Southbank, London, 2010

Photo: Urban 75