"How can you put dances in a written form? That's crazy!" (Joseph P)

You can do it by all sorts of methods. The method used in Bacon's Black Book is a sort of code that makes the dances read like a bit a knitting pattern - of course it doesn't convey the entire effect, but then neither does the text of a knitting pattern indicate the flow and feel of the finished garment.

What's wrong with using some sort of notation or code to note down the main points of the dance? For instance, how many dancers? How many bars after the music starts before the first step? Left or right foot to start? Which way to face? Single or double steps, and how many of them? Which way to turn? At what point do the "slows" come in? etc etc. All this will not give you the full effect of the dance but at least it's a foundation on which dancers and their teachers can begin to learn and recall new dances.

Of course, if morris, or any dance form from ballet to breakdance, was completely extinct and a future generation attempted to revive it, books wouldn't help them even to come close, they'd need (ideally) archive film/video footage to begin to get a feel for it. But that's not the case, people do know how morris looks and feels - the notation is just a way of remembering, recording and sharing the basic patterns on which the dances are built.


Marje