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Dartington Morris Men will host a National Morris Ring event on 5 to 7 September 2008.
The Dartington Morris Ring meeting will be centred in Totnes and will involve sixteen or more Morris sides from different parts of England in a lively weekend of dance and song that will reach the South Hams, Teignbridge and Torbay. This coincides with the 40th Anniversary of Dartington Morris, formed in the autumn of 1968 at Dartington Hall.
On Saturday 6 September there will be public displays of dancing , music and song in a number of places in the local region, as around 180 Morris men visit the region in five separate tours. These will start at about 10am, and continue until around 5pm.
On Sunday 7 September there will be a procession involving all of the Morris teams, from the Plains in Totnes to St Mary’s Church. Here many of the Morris men will attend a service, with the rare spectacle of a Morris dance side performing in the church. This will be followed at around 11.30am by a 'Mass Dance' in the square next to the Civic Hall, when many of the teams will dance together and each side perform their favourite 'show dance'.
Every year since 1934 with just a few exceptions*, meetings have been held by Morris sides that are members of the Morris Ring. This normally involves many sides getting together and dancing in public to live music played by the Morris musicians. And as you might expect, there is often a good deal of music and song in the nearby pubs as the Morris men sample the local ales. The Morris Ring was founded in the 1930s and is an association of men’s Morris clubs, concerned with maintaining the tradition and performances of the Morris in its various forms, and bringing it to a wider audience. * the only exceptions were during the Second World War
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