About

Hollytree Morris Dancers are the oldest Morris side in Canada, an honour shared with the Village Green Morris Dancers in Winnipeg. Founded in 1974 by David and Christine Winn, we are celebrating our Golden Jubilee in 2024. While David died in 2014, his legacy lives on, while Christine, 50 years later, is still dancing! Their son Stephen continues the family tradition.

While originally a men’s side, Hollytree has been a mixed side – women and men of all ages – for decades. As befitting a long-standing side, many of whom have been dancing for decades, we are an aging side these days, with many of us in our 70s and some in our 80s, but we welcome new dancers of all ages.

Our Kit

Our kit is based on the Forest of Dean Morris kit that David and Christine saw in 1973, with its multi-coloured patch jackets. Appropriately, we have added touches of gold in this Golden Year.

Our dances

We are a Cotswold Morris side and mainly dance Bampton and Adderbury dances, and a couple of Headington Quarry dances, although in the past we have had a wider repertoire.

As is fitting for a living tradition, we have added several dances of our own, including the Victoria Teacup Dance, the Holly and the Ivy (performed at Xmas events), Moose Highway (based on a tune by one of our musicians, Nell Postans), British Grenadiers and Drunken Sailor.

One of our projects some time this year is to video these dances for posterity!

Our musicians

Like all Morris sides (and unlike much folk dancing that uses recordings), we are blessed with live music and live musicians! Their tolerance in the face of our stops and starts, repetitions and so on at practice is astonishing! Not to mention their standard complaint, as we are about to do a dance in public, ‘could you tell us what you are doing?’ – sometimes expressed a bit more colourfully.

Not for nothing has it been said that the slogan of the Morris Musicians Union is ‘Waiting 700 years to learn what the next dance is!’

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