MARLBORO-On the morning of the first Saturday in May, dancers came together off a main road in the quiet Vermont town of Marlboro.
The dancers of all genders and ages were clad in bright red and white. Some outfits involved vests, while others featured suspenders. As more dancers arrived, the sound of jingling - bells on the dancers' shins - grew fuller.
"I would grab a seat while the grabbing is good, unless you want to sit on a log," said Andra "Andy" Horton, one of the four founders of the Marlboro Morris Ale, established in 1976. The 50th ale - the event where morris dancers from different places come together to dance, share a feast, and celebrate - is set for this Memorial Day Weekend, with performances in Marlboro and the Brattleboro area on Saturday and throughout Windham County and in Walpole, New Hampshire, on Sunday.
Dancers from Marlboro Morris & Sword, a group based in southern Vermont to which Horton belongs, and from Marlboro Morris M, a group from western Massachusetts, took turns doing well-rehearsed dances to live folk music.
Horton took her place among the instrumentalists. For health reasons, she transitioned from both dancing and playing music, and she now focuses on playing a three-hole pipe and a tabor (drum) simultaneously.
"Playing music, it's as much a part of the dancing as dancing is," she said. "It's a very symbiotic relationship. I don't feel like I'm missing out on anything. I'm dancing with the team, but I'm dancing using an instrument."
Dancers skipped and weaved and changed places and turned and moved in partial circles. They waved handkerchiefs and ribbons and knocked sticks together. All the while, they smiled.
Six hundred years in the making
Morris dancing is a form of English folk dance that has been around since at least the 15th century. Today's dancers say the term "ale" dates back centuries, when it described eccentric English village festivals.
These lively gatherings featured competitive dancing, drinking adult beverages, and in one English village, young maidens trying to catch lambs with their teeth. The best team of dancers would win a chance to perform at the local fair and get a cash prize.
Nowadays, there is no formal competition and far less lamb chasing. Still, the dancers treat the ale as a chance to show off what they've learned and to learn from other teams, also called "sides."
"People want to come and put their best foot forward. So in that sense, it's a competition, because they're wanting to look as good as they can," said Fred Breunig, of Brattleboro, another one of the Marlboro Morris Ale's founders. "But there are no prizes."
Horton, her former husband, Tony Barrand, and Breunig and his previous wife, Dinah, founded the Marlboro Morris Ale, the first ale in the U.S., Horton said. She, Barrand, and others had formed the local team, Marlboro Morris & Sword, at Marlboro College just a couple of years before.
Dinah Breunig died in 2003. Barrand died in 2022.
Horton's morris story begins at Pinewoods Camp, a traditional dance and music camp in Plymouth, Massachusetts, which she first attended with Barrand in 1974.
Barrand, she recalls, fell in love with morris dancing "and sword dancing and anything ritual." Though he was from England, he hadn't done such dancing in his home country.
Horton had a different first impression.
"I took a morris class, and I hated it," she said. Breunig chuckled.
"It was just exhausting," Horton said. "I had asthma. It was just very hard for me to do. And I thought, 'Oh, no. This is not for me.'"
But when Barrand started the group with his singing partner, John Roberts, at Marlboro College, where both men taught, she tagged along. She had studied ballet all her life, and she loved English country dancing, so she gave morris a chance.
"Then the more I did it, the more I really loved it," Horton, 73, said. "So my entry into it was not instant love. It was a lot more gradual."
Fred Breunig, 74, learned his first morris dance when he was in college in 1970. He was athletic but not interested in sports, and he had played the violin since age 12.
"It seemed like a cool thing," he said of morris dancing, which he started when he was around age 20 or 21. "It was musical, and so music and physical activity combined into morris dancing, and the rest is history."
Taking root in Vermont
Fred and Dinah Breunig arrived in southern Vermont in 1975 and started dancing with Marlboro Morris & Sword that fall. Fred then began teaching classes for Brattleboro Parks and Recreation.
"I was fairly new but pretty good, I thought," Breunig said.
"Yes, you were," Horton interjected.
Through these classes, Breunig recruited more members for Marlboro Morris & Sword. Over the years, as the numbers grew, some members broke off and formed new groups around the area.
Horton and Barrand were married in 1975 and held the first ale in 1976 - largely inspired by their wedding, where hundreds of people celebrated at the Marlboro home of folk singer Margaret MacArthur. Men's and women's morris teams danced together, which was monumental at the time.
"After it was over, Tony said, 'That was great. We should do it again. We should do it every year,'" Horton said. "That was the start of the Marlboro Morris Ale - [it] was our wedding, and then wanting to have another big party every year that had men and women dancing together."
The first ale saw about a dozen teams from around the country; Horton said organizers invited all teams in the United States. After a few years, the numbers grew beyond what the Marlboro College campus could accommodate, so the organizers came up with criteria for invitations.
"They included: both men's and women's teams, a mixture of teams who danced really well, and those who were new and needed inspiration. We also insisted that a team be at least two years old," Horton explained in an email. "Our goal was to increase morris dancing in the U.S., and especially good dancing."
A secondary goal has been to provide a great show for audiences, Horton said; so over the years, the ale integrated more styles of morris.
Types of morris dancing include Cotswold, the first to be featured in the ale, with sticks or handkerchiefs in-hand and bells on the legs. Other types include molly, border, clog, rapper, and sword dancing, all of which continue to be featured in varying degrees.
Though Marlboro College closed in 2020, the main venue for the ale remains on the campus, now called Potash Hill.
Practice, practice, practice
From mid-October through May, Marlboro Morris & Sword practices weekly in Brattleboro. On a recent day, the group could be found practicing dances with titles such as "Lumps of Plum Pudding" and "Mr. Toad." On the first Saturday of May, they did a dance called "Jean Boardman's Cakes," named in honor of the Whetstone Inn owner's homemade baked goods.
"Often, there's a little silliness behind the name," said Rachel Diamondstone, squire - the title in the morris world for "person in charge" - of the Ale Committee, during practice.
The dancers practiced with handkerchiefs, sticks, and "molly rings," a prop used by MMS made of ribbons tied to curtain rings. Diamondstone noted that holding a ring in each hand helps them dance more purposefully, as well as gives viewers something to look at.
At practice, the dancers dance a bit, then are stopped for feedback by Juliana Stevens, the foreman, who teaches and organizes the dances. The dancers return to dancing, incorporating the feedback, and the process continues until their routines are perfected.
Following the May 3 dance in Marlboro, the group also danced at a funeral service for longtime morris dancer Stuart Strothman, at Landmark College in Putney. Strothman taught at the college from 1995 to 2002, according to his LinkedIn profile.
This year's ale is set to host 25 teams, which Diamondstone noted is a higher number than usual in honor of it being the 50th. The teams will gather in Marlboro and dance in several spots around southern Vermont.
Dancers hail from New England; the New York City, Philadelphia, and Washington, D.C., areas; New Jersey; and Virginia. A team from Toronto and a team from England are expected, as well as a team with members from the U.S., the U.K., and Canada.
Highlights of past ales include not only impressive dancing, but also humorous, morris-themed skits performed during the ale's Sunday night feast.
Breunig remembers being part of a skit where the dancers pretended they were very old and barely able to move. Horton remembers a skit by Marlboro Morris & Sword in which the dancers tried to dance while blindfolded.
"And, while we were doing our skit, blindfolded, Tony very quietly ushered everybody out of the space. So when we were done and took our blindfolds off, nobody was there - kind of mean, but also very funny," Horton said.
"You know, making fun: making fun of the dance, making fun of ourselves, and having a good time."
More information about the Ale and a full schedule, including for the gatherings with all teams dancing on Elliot St. and in Newfane, can be found at marlboromorrisale.org.
This Arts item by Gen Louise Mangiaratti was written for The Commons.