The
Current Crop of Mad Mollies
Amy
(not shown), Wendy, Kaela, Vanessa, Elizabeth, Betsy, Craig
Foreman:
Amy
Squire: Wendy
"Molly dancing" comes from East Anglia in England. It's
associated with Plough Monday, the first Monday after Epiphany, or Twelfth
Night, in early January, for all of you not attuned to the Christian calendar.
(Or maybe it isn't.)
Like most forms of morris dancing, its origins hearken
back at least a century or two and probably more. (Here's a quick morris
history for the curious.) Less is known about molly dancing than almost
any other form of English ritual/performance dance. We know that in the
way collectors recorded it around the time of the English folk revival,
molly dances were based on country dances, the social dances of the 1800s
-- done the same except that they were danced in costume, often in blackface,
and in hobnailed boots. Dancers wore blackface as a form of anonymity.
Unlike morris dancing, molly dancing is generally recognized to have been
done at first by men only. But except for some scanty pages of notes,
historians don't really know much more about the dances.
Mad Molly's dancing style owes a great deal to that pioneering
British molly team, The
Seven Champions Molly Dancers, and to the first molly team in the
United States, Handsome
Molly. But since neither we nor they had access to a fully-documented
folk tradition of molly, Mad Molly did what great folk artistes everywhere
have done: we've made it up. We dance to dances collected by Cecil Sharp
and to dances we wrote ourselves two weeks ago. We dance with a bouncy,
high-kneed step. In performance we might burst into song at any moment.
Mad Molly is a mixed team (men and women). We wear motley
for our kit: brightly colored rag skirts, leggings, shirts, motley vests,
and whatever hats seem right at the moment. We paint our faces in a variety
of striking shades. We're a child-friendly team -- we rehearse at a children's
playground in part because it gives the children of team members a place
to play during dance practice.
When We Meet
Our practice schedule varies somewhat
-- we meet on weekends at a time convenient for all, at Ventura Community
Center in Palo Alto, near the corner of Alma and West Meadow. (Check
Mapquest: 3990 Ventura Court, Palo Alto, CA 94306)
If you're curious about what we do, feel free to drop
by. Email Amy to confirm the
date. We welcome aspiring singers, dancers, and musicians (bonus points
if you're a publicist or a good caterer).
We're a family-friendly team, and we practice at a local
park, so feel free to bring your kids to rehearsal. Men and women of all
persuasions and body types are welcome. We offer great camaraderie and
good exercise.
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