Hello

We are the “Fylde Coast Cloggers” and we will be in Brittany to entertain you during the week 10th – 17th August 2002.

We are an all-women morris dance team dancing in the style typical in the north-west of England. The origins of morris dancing are shrouded in mystery, possibly from the North African “Moorish”, but the morris traditions have developed in various forms in England and become quintessentially English.

Our dances are peculiar to the “north west” style, and some represent the mechanical movements of the machinery in the cotton mills of old. The dancers use the bits and pieces found in the trade, such as bobbins and odds and ends of cotton fabric, and wear a variation of the traditional costume and clogs of the period.

Other dances derive from the local celebrations on workers’ festival days. These are known as processional dances performed in the traditional processions accompanied by musicians and all kinds of merrymaking. Many of these dances are known by the names of the northwest of England towns or villages where they originated, and are danced with short sticks bedecked with ribbons and bells, or stylised garlands

Tradition has it that morris dancing was originally performed only by men, but during the wars of the 19^th and 20^th centuries, there were so many young men lost in battle, that there were not enough of them left to continue performing the dances, and the tradition would have died out. It was the women left behind who rescued the dances and continued the tradition, and now the dances survive to this day and are alive and well. These days it is very common to find mixed or all women teams.

Above all, our dances are very lively and we hope you will see that we dance just for the fun of it.

We wear a very attractive and colourful uniform: a pretty white blouse, a red skirt with a frilly white petticoat and, over the top, a green apron decorated with the windmill, which is the emblem of our home town. We wear black stockings and traditional English leather clogs with wooden soles. The clogs are trimmed with bells, which jingle to the accompaniment of the clatter of the wooden soles on the ground.

The dancing is accompanied by musicians, playing tunes which are as traditional as the dances themselves.

Our team dances at folk dance events all over England, and also to raise money for charity. We have also danced in our twin town Werne in Germany, and in Belgium.

We are well aware that Breton people really enjoy exhibitions of folk dancing because some of our team members are regular visitors to Brittany and have long nursed ambitions of bringing our team to join the fun.

So, here we are!

If you would like to see us, please contact André Nabat

Rue Paul Pourhiët

29111 Scaër

Thank you . . . . .