ABSTRACT
Girls’ carnival morris dancing—sometimes called ‘fluffy’ morris—is a highly competitive team dance performed by girls and young women in the North West of England and parts of Wales. Although the performance has strong historical links with North West morris dancing, girls’ carnival morris functions outside of the typical spaces of the English folk revival (such as the folk festival and pub), instead holding closed competitions in sports halls and community centres. Often likened aesthetically to cheerleading and Irish dance, girls’ carnival morris actually self-identifies more closely with the town carnival movement of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries and the small group of surviving performances associated with it, e.g. ‘entertaining’ troupe dancing, majorette baton-twirling and ‘jazz’ (kazoo) marching bands. However, the contested history of girls’ carnival morris dancing raises important issues for the English folk arts, pointing to enduring disparities around gender, place and class. This chapter will explore this lesser-known female tradition which was overlooked and even denigrated by the early folk collectors.
