“DANCING ENGLISH”

Timaru Herald, Volume CXXXVII, Issue 19835, 26 June 1934, Page 4

“DANCING ENGLISH”

THE FOLK-DANCE MOVEMENT. From England the folk-dance movement spread to Europe, writes May Elliott Hobbs from Kelmscott, Oxfordshire, to the “Christian Science Monitor.” As once before in our history, we are becoming known as the “dancing English”—a people who “practise singing and dancing m good variety.” Once more the English country dance is spreading over Europe. The stimulus of Cecil Shai'p’s work and the example of his have set some European countries to search for their own folk songs, and especially for their dances—many of them so like our own. The English Folk Dance Society sends dance teams complete with fiddlers, concertina players, pipers, attendant ritual figures, hobby horses, “Not Forget,” Jack m the Greens, and so on, to Copenhagen, to Prague, to Helsingfors, to Bayonne, Basques, Norwegians, Dutch, Portuguese, come to dance here in England with us. This summer in Vienna —that ancient thoroughfare from the Orient to Europe—East and West are to meet once more. There will be dancers from India, from Korea, from Japan, from Java, all taking part in an international festival.