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2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Enough dances for a team's lifetime at less than £1 a dance, 25 May 2001
I am surprised that a book which has been around since 1988 should wait this long for a review. But then, not everyone wants to know about morris dancing.Now that "Roy Dommett's Morris Notes Volume 2" has been withdrawn, Trefor Owen's book is currently the most comprehensive published source of morris dances from the north west of England. Ten dances are described by Trefor: Audenshaw/Dukinfield; Carr Lodge; Failsworth Garland; Golborne; Grains Bar; Lostock Junction; Millbrook; Newton-le-Willows; St. Helens Gala, and Wigan. The descriptions are clear and full, with easy-to-follow diagrams. It should therefore be quite possible to work up dances to performance standard from Trefor's notes alone, but it is always better to see dancers in action and follow them than to use books of notes like this, however good those books may be. It is a testament to Trefor's powers of description and his careful selection that quite a number of the dances here described have become "standards", and so can be seen often in performance and learned or copied from dancers. But if you want to know what the the "official" version of a particular dance is, or to bolster up your memory, or to work out a complex figure, this book will serve you well. It will also, at a pinch, enable you to put a dance together "from scratch", if you live in a part of the world that doesn't see much north west morris.
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