Bassett Street Hounds News

Hounds' dances for the 2005 Dog Days Ale - July 16-17, 2005

Here are the dances that we're likely to do at the Ale this weekend.

Dancers: Aaron, Dan, Fred, Julie, Karin, Kate, Laura, Mike, Pete, Susan, Tom
Musicians: Aaron, Laurel, Maria, Paul, Tom

Potential show dances:

The Belligerent Bluejay - 1 long stick - square/4 or rectangle/8
Carpathian Tune: (AABB)2AA:   GFE2 F2G2 | E8 | EFGA B2B2 |
Linear Bombast/Linear Hey, Square Hey/Solar System
Karin, Aaron, Fred, Susan, Tom, Pete, Kate, Dan

I Can Hew - 1 long stick - mixed/8
I Can Hew: Square-Hey, Hey-in-Line, Cross-and-Swing, Bombast
Tom, Kate, Pete, Dan, Aaron, Fred, Mike, Karin

Just in Time - 1 long stick - triangle of 5
Charles O'Connor: (AABB)3AA:   A | d2A d2A | BAG FGA |
Zigzag-Hey, Allemande-Hey, Wallaby-Hey
1-Susan, 2-Tom, 3-Fred, 4-Mike, 5-Dan

Alexandra PRSDn22.5 - 1 long stick - rectangle/6
Durham Rangers: A(ABB)4AB:   FG | ABAF A2 de | fgef d3 A |
Rounds, Interlocks, Solar-System, Spaghetti-Junction, Rounds
Karin, Mike, Susan, Fred, Tom, Dan

Dawley - 1 long stick - rectangle/8
Return From The Waterside: A(AB)3ABBA:    D2 | B2 B2 ABcA | G2 G2 FGAD |
Parallel-Heys, Linked-Hey, O-Shaped-Hey, Litchfield-Hey

The Drunken Idiot - 1 short stick - mixed 4 or 8
The Idiot: (ABCD)3:   G/2A/2 | Bd dc/2B/2 ((3AGA) BD |
Rounds, Linear-Hey/Square-Hey, Linear-Bombast/Square-Bombast

I Can Hew - 1 long stick - mixed/4 or 6 or 8
I Can Hew: Square-Hey, Hey-in-Line, Cross-and-Swing, Bombast
Tom, Dan, Mike, Karin

Morningstar - 2 short sticks - square/4
Morningstar: A(AB)3A:   GA | BcBG E2 FG | ABAF D2 GA |
Pairs, U-Hey, Lines, Line-Hey, (reorient) Pairs, Hey-Across, Lines

Mr Dolly - 2 short sticks - square/4
George Green's College Hornpipe: A(AB)4A:   ((3DEF) | G>BA>G F2 ((3DEF) |
Cross&Swing, J-Loops, Mini-Brook, Dragonsbane

Northern Star- 1 long stick - pentagon/6
Donkey Ride AB(ABB)3:   E G B B/B/ | c A B B/B/ |
Stars, Triangle-Swing, Parallel-Heys
C-Pete, 1-Karin, 2-Susan, 3-Dan, 4-Julie, 5-Tom

Ockington - 1 long stick - square/4
Drowsy Maggie: (AB)3A3:   ~E2BE dEBE | ~E2BE AFDF |
Rounds, Back-to-Back, Samuri, Inside-Circle, Square-Hey, Right-and-Left

Weobley Handclap - handclap - square/4
Jack Off the Green: A(AB)4A:   D | G2 G AGA | B2 B Bcd |
Large-Rounds, Dogbones, Stars, Bombast, Large-Rounds

Midwest Ale 2005

As Tom said...........the Midwest Ale was a BLAST!! I've never been to any of the Midwest Ales before so it was a really neat experience for me. Got to meet a lot of new Morris dancers.......from all over the country! That was amazing.

The campsite was just beautiful, a large property right on Lake Huron. The cabins were very comfortable and I particularily enjoyed the hot showers on DEMAND! Awesome. Also, the massages by the massage therapy students were a truly inspired idea! We may just have to steal that idea for this year's Hounds Ale!

Tours were very well laid out. Most of ours were walking tours. It was especially nice to get to meet and dance with the Midwest teams that some of our members used to dance with. Made us feel quite like one of the family!

A personal high for me was watching Breathless on Berthoud dance one of our dances (Drunken Idiot!:) as their show dance. Wooohooo!! The Hounds are infectious.............[grin]

In general - we had a wonderful amazing time. Ate and drank ourselves silly. Stayed up way too late and just generally enjoyed ourselves. We'll come back anytime! :-)

Midwest Morris Ale Was a Blast

The Midwest Morris Ale is over and the coordinators, Ann Arbor Morris & Sword, put on a well-run and fun ale. Thanks to Karin we now have pictures from the event up for viewing. They are mostly captioned now, but not all the descriptions have been written yet. FWIW, we stuck pretty well to the tour schedules we were given last week.

Saturday, May 28, 2005: Tour 2: Edison Tour
10:30 AM - 12:00 - Blue Water Bridge (Grassy area along river)
12:15 PM - 1:15 PM - Dance at Thomas Edison Museum
1:30 PM - 2:30 PM - Pub Stop: Thomas Edison Inn Hunt Room Lounge
2:45 PM - 3:30 PM - Dance near Huron Lightship & tour lightship
3:45 PM - Load Buses for return to camp
Pullman Morris & Sword
Bells of the North
Itasca Rugby & Morris
Bassett Street Hounds
Toronto Women's Sword
Orange Peel Morris

Sunday, May 29, 2005: Tour 2: Lexington #2 Tour
1:30 AM - 2:30 PM - Dance at Lexington Harbor Park
2:30 PM - 3:30 PM - Pub Stop: Steiss Village Inn
3:30 PM - 4:00 PM - Dance at Lexington Village Green
4:30 PM - 5:30 PM - Dance at Lakeport State Park
5:30 PM - Load Buses for return to camp
Minnesota Traditional Morris
Bassett Street Hounds
Prairie Waves Morris
Grand Rapids Reformed Morris & Sword
Orange Peel Morris

I'm hoping to coerce some members of the team to write up a little something about the ale.

I'm going to add in the dance lists at a later time.

Midwest Morris Ale

We just received a fairly impressive spreadsheet from the organizers of the Midwest Morris Ale, being held in the environs of Port Huron, Michigan. Among the various registration details. they included a list of the teams that will be attending. Quite a list!

Ann Arbor Morris, Boars Tooth Sword, Bells of the North, Bloomington Quarry Morris, Capering Roisters, Grand Rapids Reformed Morris & Sword, Half Crown Clog, Itasca Rugby & Morris, Maroon Bells & Breathless on Barthound Border, Minnesota Traditional Morris, Oak Apple Morris, Olentangy Motley Morris & Sword, Orange Peel Morris, Prairie Waves Morris, Pullman Morris & Sword, Ramsey's Braggarts, Seabright Morris, Squash Beetle Morris, Toronto Women's Sword, Upton on Calhoun, and White Rats Morris.

Oh, and us.

The tour schedules for the Ale are now up. From an email sent to us by the Ale coordinators, we seem to be tentatively scheduled as follows:

Saturday, May 28, 2005:
Tour 2: Edison Tour
10:30 AM – 12:00 – Blue Water Bridge (Grassy area along river)
10:30 AM - 12:00 - Blue Water Bridge (Grassy area along river)
12:15 PM - 1:15 PM - Dance at Thomas Edison Museum
1:30 PM - 2:30 PM - Pub Stop: Thomas Edison Inn Hunt Room Lounge
2:45 PM - 3:30 PM - Dance near Huron Lightship & tour lightship
3:45 PM - Load Buses for return to camp
Pullman Morris & Sword
Bells of the North
Itasca Rugby & Morris
Bassett Street Hounds
Toronto Women's Sword
Orange Peel Morris

Sunday, May 29, 2005:
Tour 2: Lexington #2 Tour
1:30 AM - 2:30 PM - Dance at Lexington Harbor Park
2:30 PM - 3:30 PM - Pub Stop: Steiss Village Inn
3:30 PM - 4:00 PM - Dance at Lexington Village Green
4:30 PM - 5:30 PM - Dance at Lakeport State Park
5:30 PM - Load Buses for return to camp
Minnesota Traditional Morris
Bassett Street Hounds
Prairie Waves Morris
Grand Rapids Reformed Morris & Sword
Orange Peel Morris

NEFFA

The Hounds had their first performance of the year at NEFFA on Saturday. It was a lovely day, just perfect for dancing. This was also the debut performance for new Hounds dancers, Heather Root and Kate Henson as well as the return to the fold of Fred Henson. Heather and Kate were both experienced dancers; Heather with the short-lived but impressive Renewable Rapper from Ithaca and Kate with Cotswold teams of Bells of the North (Minneapolis) and Three Village Morris (Long Island). Fred danced with the Hounds in the 1990s when we were still a men's team, leaving us to work in the midwest where he danced with Minnesota Traditional Morris and Sword and then with Three Village Morris in Long Island. See photos of the day.

Our roster for the day: Aaron Marcus, Dan Clark, Heather Root, Julie Schult, Karin Howe, Kate Henson, Mike Miller, Pete Schult, Susan Galbraith, Tom Keays. Musicians: Aaron Marcus, Laurel Sharp, Maria Hosmer-Briggs, Peter Hoover.

Dance List

• Cuckoo's Nest (Aaron, Fred, Heather, Julie, Karin, Kate, Mike, Pete)
• I Can Hew (Karin, Kate, Tom, Dan, Susan, Fred, Aaron, Mike)
• Just in Time (Susan, Tom, Pete, Karin, Heather)
• The Belligerent Bluejay (Julie, Heather, Fred, Aaron; Tom, Karin, Kate, Dan)
• Dawley (Aaron, Dan, Fred, Heather, Julie, Kate, Pete, Susan)
• Drunken Idiot (Pete, Dan, Tom, Mike)

Queen of Winternet

Well, how cool is this? We just found this by surfing the net, but back in December 1996, the Burlington (Wisconsin) High School Drama Club put on a performance of Susan Galbraith's "Queen of Winternet", a mummer play that the local morris teams performed on May Day in 1995. We have to assume that Susan knew about this at the time since both the performance and the play are referenced on Peter Millington's article on modern mummer play compositions, "This is a Mummers’ play I wrote." See also the reference on the Traditional Drama Research Group's "Folk Play Links - Modern Compositions & Adaptations".