There have been threads where, occasionally, I confess to having felt the same reactions as "GUEST,Another Observer". Mostly I just let them get on with it unless someone makes a point to which I think I could contribute some personal experience. Or, as in this case, someone raises a notion that is novel to me. My post on this occasion is an example of the latter

Les in Chorlton wrote
"I think their is also a tention within the general world of English Folk. The song side is generally a bit, and sometimes more than a bit, left wing. The dance side is a bit and I mean a bit right wing."

Les, I'm reasonably familiar with examples of singers (old and new) who could be regarded as left wing, from C# right through to Chris Kempster, but I'm interested in your proposition that dancers lean to the right. To the extent that the evidence supports you, it raises a couple of questions.

1 Do you think that, while singing actively encourages variation in interpretation, dancing tends to work best if everybody conforms to the "rules" especially when doing set dances and using a caller? That seems to be my experience and I can imagine the dance context might encourage those for whom conformity to rules and the rules themselves were important.

1 Do you mean "English Folk" in the sense of "the people in England who are part of the folk scene" or do you think it applies to people from anywhere who are "into English Folk music and dance"? I don't see much support for your proposition in the Australian folk singing and dancing scene, but I might be blinkered.

Cheers, Rowan