_Noise_Conspiracy.jpg "The (International) Noise Conspiracy - 002-09-17: 9:30 Club, Washington D.C., USA")
Strictly Stop Dancing, Please
January 7th, 2009 at 03:09
2009 hasn’t got off to a great start – there’s a great stench of blood on it its hands. People are dying. Not just in Gaza, or in Afghanistan, or even in a way that the media can tenuously link to the credit crunch, but people are dying of the worst thing of all: old age.
All this death is bad news, because it puts Morris Dancing under threat. The Morris Ring, who appear to be essentially the equivalent of FIFA but with added bells and whistles have earned themselves some press this last week by being brutally honest and saying that all of the old Morris dancers are dying off and young people aren’t replacing them because dressing up with ribbons and bells, and spending hours at a time banging sticks together with beardy men in the village hall is seen as “embarrassing”. I can’t possibly imagine why.
Apparently the worry is that in 20 years time, Morris dancing will be “extinct”, and for some reason, this is a bad thing.
“This is a serious situation”, a spokesman said whilst not noticing all of the war and conflict in the world. “Once we’ve lost this part of our culture it will be almost impossible to revive it.”, he continued, inadvertently articulating what I’m hoping for.
I’m sorry for my lack of sympathy towards the Morris dancers plight, but when I see Morris dancers, I tend to thank the corporations for the fruits of globalisation for marginalising British traditions like this. As a young person who grew up in the late 80s and 90s, and indeed this decade to some extent, I’m glad I’ve had a diet of American cultural imperialism rather than the unpleasant choice I assume my dad got, between either dancing with bells and sticks, or around the May Pole.
When I hear the alarm bells jingling and look at the current Morris crisis though, all I see is textbook Darwinian natural selection: by dancing around dressed as mental patients the participants are putting themselves at an evolutionary disadvantage by severely reducing their chances of propagating their genes to a new generation. This has clearly already happened as young people today no longer have the gene that blocks out any sense of shame.
Maybe there is a way out for them though. After all, this is space-year 2009, and we’ve developed all sorts of amazing genetically engineered and mind-altering technologies. Surely there’s some sort of technology we can use to keep the tradition of Morris dancing alive for reasons that may become clear some day? I think I know the solution:
Booze.
If there’s one thing young people love, it’s getting smashed in nightclubs and (here’s the key bit) dancing. All the Morris Ring need to do is have a little rebranding exercise. Take Morris Dancing out of the village fetes and instead host it in inner-city clubs. Replace the bells with glow-sticks and the twee accordion farts with hardcore trance and the orange juice refreshments with a licensed bar, and before you know it young people will flock to it.
Then again, maybe it’s sometimes better to just let some things die?
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