The World At The Doorstep

One of the cool things about NYC is that you find pieces of the world scattered all throughout the city. This past weekend in Central Park, I found a large group of people performing the Morris Dance, an English dance from somewhere around the 15th century. Its origins are traced to Spain, around the time when the Moors were driven out of the country. In celebration, a pageant called Moresca was created and dances with similar names multiplied throughout Catholic Europe around that time.


Nowadays, there are 6 styles of Morris dancing and the one I saw was the Cotswold Morris, which is normally danced with handkerchiefs. Groups of 4 to 6 people perform steps and jumps to the sound of violins, accordions and little bells tied to the dancers' legs, and though their performance was more stamina than skill, it was really cool to see how much they were enjoying doing it.