Turning Toward Each Other

Earlier this year, I went to a May Day festival in a small town in western Massachusetts. Adults gathered by the maypole on the village green and the children paraded around it holding ribbons, weaving a joyful rainbow in celebration of Spring. Someone handed out dog-eared songbooks. I stood with friends in a gentle rain; we sang, and watched the Morris dancers.

Meghan Kallman.

Morris is an English tradition. It’s always looked to me as though Easter eggs have come alive, as colorfully-clad dancers weave geometrical patterns through the grass with ribbons and white handkerchiefs floating behind them. Dancers are usually accompanied by an accordion and/or a fiddle; I was told as a child that the bells they wear strapped to their legs are to wake up the earth in the springtime. Morris is a peasant’s dance, thousands of years old, likely influenced by paganism.

The other thing about Morris dance is that it was traditionally a male pursuit. But changes within the tradition offer us a metaphor to think about the crisis we face now.

Read the essay from the Uncertain Future Forum by Meghan Kallman - “Turning Toward Each Other.”