Call and Response project interview/round table discussion

Laura Connolly [LC]

Rachel Fenton [RF]

Connor O’Kane [CK]

Emily Wallace [EW]

David [D]

Allistair [A]

When I couldn’t tell David and Allistair apart [D/A]

00:00:25:06 - 00:00:55:23

LC: I'm Laura Connolly, I’m project managing the Dance Heritage project at Dance City. The project is called Call and Response. And we're looking at mapping the dance of the North East, right across any dance style at all, past and present. So it's a very, very big project. So initially the project was narrowed down to look at three dance styles, which were ballet, clog dance and break dance. Three, you would think, initially very different styles. But actually, as we've dug deeper and we’ve talked, the three of us have chatted. Because you can’t see us, this is this is Emily Wallace from Sunderland -

EW: Hello

LC: – Director of Sunderland Ballet CIC. Connor O'Kane, founder of Bad Taste Cru. So we've been brought together as practitioners who are very passionate about our own very unique style of dance, which is why we've been pulled together. And part of the project is to deliver workshops, deliver masterclasses. We're creating a digital archive, collecting stories, images of artefacts. So, you know, dream world, it would be - Jackie told us, pair of clogs, that kind of thing - in the archive. So I know, David, you've brought some things in, we've got some rapper swords coming down. So this archive will be ongoing for as long as it possibly can, and people will be able to input their own items as and when on a voluntary basis. And it will be a way hopefully that Dance City can host academics coming to research whatever style they might want to research and hopefully some clog dance. And so we're putting our backgrounds, our knowledge into there. But it will just grow and grow and grow, hopefully.

RF: Should we say something to - about, one of the underlying aspirations of the project is, when we conceived this project, it was around the time of the riots last summer, and one of the ideas that we had behind this is that in all of these dance styles, we can see history of global migration. Ballet isn't an essentially English form, it derives from Russia and other parts of the world as well. And it's practiced all over the world, it's a very sort of universal dance language. Probably of the three that we focused on with this project I think it could possibly, I can think of a counterargument to that, but I think, you know, we have people studying in our public classes here who have just arrived in this country and one of their first things, if they've been a dancer, is to find a ballet class. And then with breakdancing, that's got a very - it's a kind of dance form that's kind of crossed the world with, you know - you can talk more about that - but it came to Ireland from the States. I think that's fair to say. And likewise, there's a history of migration as well with clog dancing.

LC: Yeah.

RF: So one of the aspirations of this project is to really open up the notion of what North - dance in the North East is, and to involve new communities as well as communities who've been established in the Northeast for some time. And we also know that actually the population of the region is a lot more diverse, historically, than people might originally think. So that's something we want to take forward as we develop this activity in the archive.

LC: Yes. Thank you, Rachel.

A(?): Yes, the whirly foot[?] dance of South Africa is very popular in the Northeast!

LC: Yes!

D: I was thinking about the same thing!

[crosstalk/unintelligible]

D: It’s what they wore to work!

LC: Exactly! Yes, yes.

00:04:26:10 - 00:04:52:06 D: Yeah, what miners wore. Miners probably wore clogs.

A?: Yes they did.

D?: And ship shipyard workers would wear clogs.

LC: Yeah.

D?: So that's what they dance in. South African miners wear gumboots. So they do gumboot dancing. But we’ve all got two legs [laughter] well most of us anyway. So, like you say the similarities, links and connections are often not very far below the surface.

 00:04:52:06 - 00:05:17:11 A?: Yeah. And then you watch the older tap dancers in the states. So, 'Honi’ Coles who danced on the streets, you know, because dancers of colour didn't get to dance, you know, and it's nothing like Fred Astaire, which I loved Fred Astaire as a kid [unintelligible] but ‘Honi’ Coles, you know? And I mean, I saw him when he was 86 I think, and he did a forty-five minute set. He had one other dancer who did two minutes in the middle to give him a breather. But other than that he did a forty-five minute set. He was impressive. And the whole way he held his body was much more like a clog dancer, much more like, you know, it wasn’t this very, very loose and this, you know, it was all on the feet and that was, I don't know the steps well enough to know if there's any actual crossover, but visually and the sort of the head space, you know, you got the feeling that if Laura had stood up next he would have known exactly what she was about.

LC: [laughter] Yeah, that sounds amazing. Thank you, Allistair(name?), that's really helpful. Yeah, so we've been looking at this and I think, obviously, my passion and style is Northumbrian Clog. I'll pass over to Emily and Connor in a second about their style, but I think as we've just been workshopping together and chatting together, little kind of tidbits are coming out that we go, oh! my goodness, that links to that and that links to that. So, maybe systematically if you talk about who you are, and what your background is and pass around and then we can look at the links that we found.

EW: Yeah, sure. So for the purpose of the recording, Emily Wallace, Sunderland Ballet. So I specialize in ballet, obviously, but specifically, Cecchetti[sp?] ballet. So that was - that arrived in the UK. The founder was a man called Enrico Cecchetti. So Italian as you might guess by the name, who had found himself in Russia at the turn of the last century and was working in the imperial court there as a ballet dancer initially, and then ballet master as he moved more into teaching. And then he became the ballet master for Diaghilev's Ballet Russe. So they went all over the world, doing newer styles of ballet, so bringing ballet into the next century. And when Diaghilev died and there was no more funding, they all dispersed and ended up in different countries and for a while Enrico Cecchetti had a studio in London. And so, for that reason, he’s quite closely linked to what we call the English school, the English style of ballet. So, Ninette de Valois, who founded the Royal Ballet, was trained in Cecchetti. Frederick Ashton, who was the founder/choreographer wasn't, initially working directly with Cecchetti, but, he was trained by Margaret Craske, who was one of, his students. So there's a direct link there. And, of course, Frederick Ashton, by the 1960s, he's got a number of really successful ballets under his belt and he recreates La Fille mal gardée, which is an old ballet from, I think, the late 1700s. Don't quote me on that, though. But Tamara Karsavina had had been in it, in Russia, and gave him a lot of advice. And of course, he put that famous clog dance into La Fille mal gardée - so-

A?: Can I tell you something- I saw Frederick Ashton.

EW: Did you?

A?: In La Fille mal gardée. He was a very old man, he wasn't really dancing. A man called John Gilpin(?) was the principal dancer. At the Sunderland Empire.

EW: Wow.

A?: In the 1960s.

EW: Wow.

A?: That took me back.

EW: That's amazing.

[both singing and tapping]

A?: I’ve still got it in my head.

EW: Yeah. Love it.

A?: I'm sorry for the interruption.

EW: No, no, it's fine-

A?: But there’s a link, between-

EW: Because that's it!

A?: Between me and the 19th century.

EW: Absolutely. That's it, that's it. So the Cecchetti, Cecchetti is a method of training. So the idea is, if you start at the beginning and you follow the exercises that he devised, you eventually become an accomplished dancer. So that's different to a mere syllabus, if you like, where there's a collection of exercises and you just throw it together and you do your grade five, and next year, grade five might have been chucked out and it might be something else, so the Cecchetti work  never really changes, it's canonical. So we do these things and we know, and it gives it a little bit of- you feel quite special doing it because you think, well, Karsavina did this, and Pavlova did this and Fonteyn did this. Fonteyn didn't like Cecchetti’s work, actually, but she did it because everybody did it at the time. And it was said at the time that you weren't a finished dancer until you passed through Cecchetti’s hands, you know, but he died in, I think, 1928. So we are going back a bit, and, they do say that the technique has moved on since then and, what I would say- so my original training was Royal Academy of Dance. I started with the typical RAD ballet exams with a local teacher who was Miss Fern for me in Sunderland, and I couldn't progress very far, after a certain point because I didn't have the right, physique to go full time. And if you weren't in, a ballet school by the time you were sort of 16 in those days, then you didn't have a dance career, you know, everything was a bit different then. And, so where I was I going with this? Ah yes, so I encountered the Cecchetti method, and it was a little bit more inclusive because I suppose at the time it was less formulated, people didn't have to, you know, there weren’t as many ballet schools and things so the Cecchetti world was less structured and hierarchical. So I found a place in that world, and what I noticed is the gorgeous upper body movement and the really fast footwork, which was different to the way I'd been trained. And the really fast footwork, I suppose, brings me right back to Laura and Connor. But the upper body movement, interestingly, is really relevant in today's- for today's contemporary dancers. With all of their off kilter balances that they do. And so, Cecchetti dancers might not have jumped as high, but they would jump with their body and head on one side, for instance. So, everything was just a little bit different. And you can see the struggles that professional dancers have when they come to the Ashton work. He's really going strong on his Cecchetti training and everything. Grand jetés with the body right over to one side isn't really seen anymore. So the world has changed, but I was really fortunate that I found that Cecchetti method in Glasgow and when I moved back to the northeast, I brought it with me. And so that's the method that I teach in Sunderland now.

LC: What I love- when we did a workshop recently with the Dance City CAT students and Emily was getting them into position, their heads to one side, and the reason behind that was that it gave an illusion-

EW: - that you've jumped higher.

LC: That you’ve jumped higher, you land with your head to one side. And I think that when I take that and translate that into clog, in Northumbrian clog style you do a rounded shuffle. And I think it's the same idea of illusion, that it looks like you're shuffling so much faster than a tap dancer would shuffle with straight feet. And I bring mine round, which is a Northumbrian way to clog dance.

And I love that idea of illusion, and I'm sure for Connor as well, there are little tricks that you do that make things look and appear much faster and much cleverer. And that’s really fascinating, all those little things [unintelligible]

D?: Like the great old Morris dancers, when they went for the big jump, just at the peak they would lift their feet up.

00:12:18:21 - 00:12:42:00 EW: Yeah, that's exactly it. Exactly it.

D: You know. So they would go up you know. And then just lift again, and then of course they’ve got to put them down.

[crosstalk]

A: And they kept the illusion of them hanging-

D: Yes, the illusion of them hanging. Yes.

EW: Yes. Exactly, exactly.

CK(?): And those little details.

EW: And Cecchetti didn't refer to it all the time as ballet. His syllabus, his method is still in print, it's known as The Manual. And, it was called A Manual of Theatrical Dancing. So, the emphasis there is on creating the illusion, I think. Not just ballet, but theatrical dancing.

LC: Which I think is where- it's a link we found when we were thinking, I think from footwork, both Conor and I, we found very quickly that we had similarities in our footwork and we're thinking, where does that ballet come in? I think the background of thinking back to pantomime and I know you were saying Cecchetti was literally born in a dressing room-

EW: - He was!

LC: His mother was in- it was that style of theatre that she was able to be pregnant and performing, which wouldn’t happen if you were in the Royal Ballet.

EW: Wouldn't happen now, but there was a difference. There was a difference in those days between those who specialized in mime and those who specialized in the more technical dancing. So presumably she worked more on the mime style, and she was able to keep performing until she was nine months pregnant, and Cecchetti himself was born in a dressing room.

[laughter and crosstalk]

LC: It's brilliant. I'm going to pass to Connor, thank you Emily.

CK: Yeah. So I guess I'll start with what I know about the origins of Breaking, which is a microcosm, depending on, as I'm sure you guys who have studied your dance style’s origins. Breaking is only 50 years old, so there's still a lot of wrestling about where it started, when it started, you know, who was the pioneers? One, you know, in one decade it was these guys were the pioneers and then it was actually there's a generation before that as well. But to my knowledge, so breaking started, it formed into the dance that we now call breaking in the 70s in New York. It was born out of the Bronx and, very quickly spread. And it was created by predominantly black and latino kids in the ghettos in America and it's one element- breaking is one element of hip-hop culture, which was the culture that emerged, the youth culture that emerged, in the 70s in New York. There's five elements in the culture.

So, one is breaking, two is DJing, three is MCing, four is graffiti art, and the five is the knowledge, and the knowledge is the knowledge of yourself, basically, which ties all the elements together. So that kind of came about in the 70s and it was a response to music as all of these dance styles are. There was a first generation of B-Boys, like there's a guy called Spy. ‘The man with a million moves’ or a thousand moves. There was two twin brothers as well. The twins, they were called, and they were kind of- they were inspired by Fred Astaire and all of that era of music and dance. So they were kind of street kids emulating, in a way, with very different clothing and very different attitudes and, you know, and backgrounds, emulating what they saw, these suave, a kind of movie star characters doing.

But then there was also a lot of- the original dancers were called freestyle dancers. So before breaking started in the early 70s, you had a dance that preceded that called rock dance or rocking, and that used to be called freestyle. And freestyle was these guys that paved the way for the style called breaking. And they were doing a freestyle dance to funk and soul records. Some of them were doing them in clubs, some of them were doing them on the street, it just depended on where you were. And it was kind of counter to the disco scene as well, because the disco scene was coming up in the 70s. And these guys were like, ‘oh, disco is cheesy, disco is corny, we're going to do it our way’. So they were kind of coming up with, like a bit of a more aggressive and a bit more like, something that had a bit more showmanship and a bit more, fire, I guess, behind it. So I guess the crew that's most sort of widely known now would be Rock Steady Crew.

Those guys kind of formed in the 70s in New York. And then, I guess the style of breaking is a combination of - there's an introduction, which is a stand up part of the dance where you're doing- the original steps was 1 or 2 very basic steps, which would be your introduction before you drop to the floor. And dropping to the floor was when you broke out. So that's why they call it breaking, because you were breaking out, or you were breaking down to the floor. Or the other terminology is the break of the record, because, whenever the- there was a DJ called Kool Herc in New York in 1973, who is called the Godfather of hip hop, and he learned how to play two records on two separate turntables and loop them.

So you have the same record, and you might have one little drum section that was 10 seconds long, and people wanted to, like, hear the drum section over and over. So he developed like the crossfader mixer. Kool Herc developed that himself, he had like an electrician's background. And he had all these big sound systems in New York at the time. So he was the one that would turn up to block parties with these big speakers in the back of his car, and he would set it all up. He would play the music, and this is where people say breaking first came up like. And he learned how to loop the drum section of a record, and it was called the ‘merry go round’. And when the merry go round went on, that's when the B-Boys or the B-Girls, which is the break-boys or the break-girls, would break down on the floor and just sporadically go wild. So it was kind of like the, I guess, the formation of breaking. And to this day, I guess the music is inspired by, James Brown, you know, funk, soul from that era. But then when you look at and trace the lineage of the music that them guys were listening to, you're going further back than into jazz and blues, gospel, country, you know, older music. So there's definitely a lineage, of - musically - of what happened to get to the point where breaking became a thing, which I find really interesting, you know, because it's yeah.

LC: Yeah, it's amazing, thank you.

[unintelligible]

00:19:38:18 - 00:20:07:01 LC: Yeah, so, the title of our project is Call and Response, and I think what's really interesting- my background is obviously in folk dance and music. And Call and Response for me is the conversation I would have with a musician, like I have done so many times with Allistair and David here. And it's not just having a musician playing from the dots, as we would say, it's that conversation, it’s the eye contact, it’s listening and watching. And I think we all have that element, so in your battle style, you'd come out in a pair and you’d sort of dance facing each other rather than facing the audience, and you’re kind of responding to the music, hitting those breaks, beats, as well as seeing what each of them are doing. And, you know, responding to that.

And then we talked about initially Cecchetti would have had probably a violinist in -

EW: He used to play the violin.

LC: He used to play the violin- so when he was choreographing there was that element as well -

EW: But also, but traditionally in a ballet studio set up you’d have a pianist in the corner. So that's where the call and response comes in. It's usually between the director, or ballet teacher and the musician in the corner. Because I guess that it’s more it's more structural and more formal, but that interaction is still there.

D or A?: But it's not recorded.

EW: It's not recorded

[crosstalk]

EW: It’s live, it’s live.

D/A: It’s live interaction. It's like a two-way energy flow.

EW: Absolutely. And when I was doing my teaching qualifications, and I think this might have changed a little bit, a huge part of what I was marked on was my ability to communicate with the pianist.

So the examiners were sitting watching, but more than what I was doing with the kids, was how was I directing the pianist and how we were working together, you know.

A/D: I used to get asked to be the official resident musician for the clog dance competitions at Morpeth’s traditional gathering. And this is only back in like the 70s or 80’s that you used to get quite large numbers because there were various schools [unintelligible] Walker, and other people would bring their students to these competitions. So you might get asked to play for 12 or 15 dances. And the instructions from the festival committee were, ‘you have to play the same tunes at the same tempo for every dancer’. Well, I didn't do that. Because of what we've been talking about.

You just notice, from their feet or their posture or their face, whether they're comfortable or not or whatever. You notice little bits of emphasis within a step – Stuart is good at this as well of course -  and, you know, you respond to that. And so, the next time that step comes up, you can either absolutely reinforce it with the music, or cut right across it, or whatever. But there's a live interactive communication.

CK: I think that's a real parallel for all of our styles, because you made me think about, well, even with with all of our dance styles, there's an audience as well, and in a lot of these situations. So there's a call and response there. You're feeding off energy, you're getting back. So in some shows or performances or battles, depending on the dance style, there might be room for improvisation, like the way there's room when you're playing music to go, well, this person's really good at that fast footwork stuff, so I'm going to keep the tempo up for them or I don't know -

D/A: I'm the same with a Ceilidh, a hall full of people dancing in a Ceilidh, you’re responding to the audience.

00:22:57:12 - 00:23:18:09 CK: You are.

D/A: And it is the two-way energy, definitely.

[crosstalk]

CK: That energy you get. I know in breaking you have – in breaking culture the two main things are a battle and a cipher. The cipher is like the Ceilidh. It's the circle, it's the circle where you go in together, it's more one by one’s and you exchange. But there's actually, when you understand the dance more, there's conversations taking place between the dancers in the circle. So we might be having a circle and the conversation is who's got the funkiest style. And then the next conversation over here could be who's got the craziest, most technical power moves, or someone else might but into this conversation and change the topic, or change the discussion and go, well, actually, can you do this?

And so the conversation keeps moving based on who says what, and what kind of gets taken or not.

D/A: Something you’ve often said about the appeal of rapper dancing, particularly rapper dancing, for young men is that it's difficult.

[crosstalk]

D/A: That it looks exciting and difficult. And you touched very much on that when you talked about the origins of breaking. Young people in New York would see footage of Fred Astaire. And okay, they weren’t going to dance in that style or that costume or whatever, but they could see that what he was doing wasn't easy. And the aspiration to do that seems to me to be part of what drove that movement.

D/A: And there is sometimes a tendency in various areas of art education that, you know, working with kids where they make it easy. Kids really like challenges. You got to make it achievable at each stage but actually, you know. If they’re learning to play football they want to do all the fancy stuff.

CK: That's right. You know, I think it's part of human nature, isn’t it? When I learned how to dance, you’ve seen somebody do something and your brain couldn't comprehend it. And that was the magic, wasn't it? That was the thing that drew you in, that was the thing you wanted to follow.

D/A: Like Stuart Purdy is a musician we work with a lot, and he often says when Laura’s just done a set, he’ll say 'it's not human’-

[laughter and crosstalk]

-‘what Laura’s just done isn’t possible’

LC: ‘feet shouldn't be faster than fingers’.

D/A: Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[crosstalk]

D/A: ‘It's not natural!’

00:25:23:16 - 00:25:59:11 LC: We like a challenge don’t we with that.  Yeah. It's good.

Just going back to talking about Fontaine and La Fille mal gardée. You might be able to help, you two on this. So I- you might know, my clog hero is Jackie Toaduff(?), and he shone out for me because I love his showmanship and I love his background, that he was obviously set to be a miner, following his father and his brothers down and had his dance lessons in secret because his parents wouldn't agree to him having dance lessons, because ‘that was for lasses and he needs to go down the pit like his brothers’, and ended up dancing on cruise ships for 25 years in gold sequined jackets. And I just love that, and I love that the people he's met- so we've been looking at La Fille mal gardée and, I thought that Ashton, well, I've read this somewhere, that Ashton choreographed the clog dance on a clog dancer called Stanley Holden. So he was a ballet dancer, but also had clog dance heritage.

And in a black and white version of the dance I've seen, you can really tell he's a clog dancer, as opposed to the Royal Ballet dancers who dance it beautifully, but it hasn't got that grit to it. And I loved seeing that film of Stanley Holden. But looking again at Jackie Toaduff, and his history. He was friends with Margot Fontaine, and she had invited him, apparently to teach at the Royal School of Ballet. And, now what I've read is that his influence went into create the La Fille mal gardée clog dance. I don't know whether either of you have knowledge on Jackie doing that. When you read little bits of things from everywhere. I'll talk to Chris Metherell(?). But it is, it's fascinating. I think Jackie going across to America- at that sort of time we were talking about, and another clog dancer came across called Anne Liscombe, you might have been aware. She was from South Shields, and apparently, she travelled, I think it was 20’s or 30’s, she went across to LA, set up a dance studio there, and she taught Gene Kelly to dance. So it’s - I’m finding out lots of little bits, little nuggets, which are really exciting. And it's, yeah, it's piecing all the jigsaw. So we've got six weeks left to piece the jigsaw.

D/A: What's the connection between Johnson Elwood and Fred Astaire?

[crosstalk]

LC: Oh. You’ve got something- there might well be one.

[crosstalk]

D/A: It’s just at the back of my mind. Johnson Elwood was a clog dancer from Chester le Street, he lived in Chester le Street. So he would have been in his 70s, he would have been born around about 1900, I guess.

D/A: Yes, I've logged(?) this before.

[crosstalk]

D/A: I think either he-

D/A: I played for him in the mid 60s and I would have said -

D/A: when he was supporting himself on chairs-

[crosstalk]

D/A: And when I first played for him he was dancing, you know, regularly. But then he was mad keen to dance, but he had to have two chairs and hold on to this. And then you could see as he got really good, to please his wife and the kids, he would still be touching it. And what's his name, the Lancashire chap. He did that as well.

LC: Sam Sherry(?)

D/A: Sam.

LC: He had a frame built, Sam, to hold.

[crosstalk]

D/A: I- something is telling me that either young Johnson Elwood taught Fred Astaire some steps. Or Johnson Elwood’s dad, or something. I’ll see if I can dig around.

[crosstalk]

D/A: In the states they often call it ‘flatfoot clogging’, don’t they. They're not wearing actual clogs, they’re wearing shoes with -

LC: It's more like taps

D/A: It’s more like tap but they call it clogging.

D/A: [unintelligible] what's normally called Appalachian clog. You know, there are similarities, but there's lots of differences. But they, certainly in the 60s and 70s, used- when they were doing a performance - they used the term ‘freestyling’. They would be doing various things, which are all, you know, worked out. And then it was somebody’s time to freestyle.

A?: We still see sometimes in a session, there used to be a woman who would come to Whitby Folk Week and she would just bring a board. So there are people playing concertinas and flutes and, [word?] and guitars and all sorts, playing tunes in a pub. But this woman would just put a bit of wood on the floor and step. And that was, so she was a foot percussionist. But you would call that freestyle what she was doing. She was just responding to what was going on in the music.

D: But, I mean, Taylor remember is playing in an Allerton(?) pub. Will Taylor is a fiddle player. He's dead and gone nearly twenty years now. And several of the men getting up and doing, but just in leather shoes, but doing-stepping, and in fact Taylor did a bit. And the fiddle player Catherine(?) (name?) from Bellington. His brother lived in Harbottle, just died-

A: Not George Hepple?

D: No, no. Hepple was more- anyway. But he used to dance, have to ask Catherine about that. So a lot of people did have, you know, that joy of moving, and-

A: Well, yes.

[crosstalk]

D?: Yeah

[crosstalk]

A: Because it just makes you want to move.

LC: So we might have to wrap up.

[Laura Taylor enters and LC talks with her]

LC: Maybe before the project ends, we have a larger roundtable discussion? There's lots to draw out isn’t there.

D: There's all sorts of things like, you know, you drive up past Alwinton(place/spelling?] and there's a completely disused building on the side of the road, just now got hay in it, but, you know, and it’s seven or eight miles past Alwinton[??], it's seriously out there. And it was built as a dance hall. Built as a dance hall by the guy who owned all the farms up there, and he thought it would be nice for [unintelligible]

You know, they say because he was a pianist, probably mainly, you know, light Edwardian stuff or whatever. But he loved just sitting in the back, vamping along behind the local fiddlers. So he used to get all his shepherds who worked for him on all his farms, y’know they would come and they would have a rehearsal the week before, and the and the chauffeur would come from the big house in Berwick and pick-  and they would have to walk down to the road from God knows where, and the chauffeur would pick them all up and they would go off to the big house in Berwick, and they would have a rehearsal. And as they left, the butler would hand them a bottle of the –what's it called? The Antiquary, which is apparently a very fine whiskey.

CK: The Antiquary.

D: The Antiquary, that’s the one, yes. See, I knew somebody would know.

[laughter/crosstalk]

D: And well they certainly remembered that. And, I mean, there's all sorts. The fact that outside the dance hall, and it would be the same in them all, would be a little triangle of field drains, you know, earthenware drain about so diameter and about so long. And they would all have them, these halls, and they would go and just before the dance, you would quietly put your bottle of whiskey.

And everybody knew whose bottle of whiskey it was [laughter] and you just casually come out and have a chat with your mates and have-

[crosstalk]

EW: And then back to the dancing.

D: And then back to the dancing. Because you know, there wasn’t bars and things in those days, depending on which parish you were in.

A: And at times they would walk up [unintelligable]

D: Oh yes.

A: Walk seven miles over a hill to another valley for the dance. And they had to keep playing until morning because they couldn't get home in the dark. And so it is dusk till dawn. And Willie Atkinson on that recording that you made it, she says, ‘I took my pushbike with us, for company mainly’.

[crosstalk]

A: And I bet in Northern Ireland there was a lot of great stuff going on, because the community

CK: I’m sure, I’m sure.

D: Just, you know, absolutely.

CK: Definitely some good stories, you know, funny my mum shared something with me the other day on Facebook that my aunty sent. My mum’s side of the family are all the Irish dancers, [unintelligible]. And it was something around the mid 30’s when it came out in Northern Ireland, like, they were trying to stop the women from going to the dances. Whenever they started to put their foot down. And then you had like, they kind of probably then I don't know how long that lasted for, but there was a phase of like, not much activity. But then that's the Ceilidh houses, all came from that, didn’t they? You know, nobody could stop you from putting the message out around the community. ‘Party at my house on Saturday night, bring your dancing shoes, and let’s go, and bring a musician or whatever’.

LC: I think that was similar as in in the music halls, we've got like Dan Lino(sp?] clog dancing and doing comedy and that was very popular for a time. And then it became a place where, you wouldn't take, you know, your wife to, for a period of time, and so that died out a little bit.

And all of that is really interesting to unpick. And we talked a bit about pantomime and there always being, the character, like the Buttons character who was always female in the breeches. And it was that era where to see that part of the lady's leg was quite, you know, a fascination so it’s-  you know, and clog dancers wearing, dressing up as male dancers, so female dancers wearing breeches and long shorts and a bolero, because it was a male competition style at that time.

So we could go on for hours couldn’t we.

[crosstalk]

A: Does the name Sam Hardy mean anything to you, I think it was Sam Hardy. A guy who, between the wars, collected tunes, songs, and stories. And he published them in a magazine, monthly or weekly or whatever. But then eventually they got collated. Is it Sam Hardy?

00:36:00:07 - 00:36:23:16 CK: The name like that definitely rings a bell.

D: Well I know the book you mean.

A: Well, there's a guy in the Hexham village, Keith Buchanan, who's from Northern Ireland. He's from Antrim, and his best mate at school, where they used to go playing in streams and woodlands and stuff, was the grandson of this guy Sam Hardy. It all happened between the wars, but there's a book, a collation of over 700 items that might have got lost otherwise.

CK: Because I know, I seen that- was it Fiddler On the Road? Have you heard of that?

D: There's I mean, there's quite a lot where they, talked- there's the Doherty book, Fiddler On the Road, who that? It’s one of the Northern Irish ones isn’t it, yeah.

CK: Fiddler On the Road,

D: And there's tunes and lots of sort of interview type stuff. Yes.

CK: Yeah, that was a documentary, but it was a book. I think it was first maybe a book or was it. I think it was post world war two. Where a lady in Northern Ireland said ‘this ceilidh house culture is dying out, we need to collect this music before it gets lost’. Which is a similar kind of thing, but I don't know the name of the other one. So you'll have to tell me.

D: No, it's the ordinary Friday night dance was eight till six.

LC: Six in the morning?

D: Six in the morning. And I thought that the guys were exaggerating, but had another friend, an old concertina player from County Durham, and he was a Pitman and he was a big union man both in the pits and he was, must have been one of the early members of the Musicians Union. And he says, ‘oh yes, yes, Friday night dance eight til six. If it went past six you got sixpence extra for every half hour’. That's for the whole band, right. But he says, ‘yes, the longest I ever played was the day the First World War finished, the Armistice Day, the First World War.’ So, 1918. He says ‘we played from 8 to 8 and they still wanted some more. And we said, we think you've had enough’. But of course, you know, it's a social event. You stop probably just before midnight for supper. And you stop at three for first breakfast. Stop at five for second breakfast. Then you have two more dances and then you walk home and go straight to work.

So in the pit villages they'd be going straight -

LC: Down the pits.

D: Actually he didn't always, because Saturday, by then Saturday was a half day, and his boss knew that if he had a really busy night he might not show up and, and his boss knew the communities all around there needed him. So he said, yes fine whatever. I didn't notice. He didn't get paid for it, but-

LC: Jackie Toaduff was one of those, I think he performed at the Royal Albert Hall and the next day straight back to Durham and down the pits.

[crosstalk]

LC: Right, until next time. Thank you very much for joining.