The 2025 morris season

Last weekend the Binghamton Morris Men and the B. F. Harridans staged our annual Harvest Home Tour, doing morris dance performances in Binghamton and Endicott. We danced at the Binghamton Farmers’ Market, the Fall Fest in Grippen Park, and the Cider Mill in Endicott.

For the Binghamton Men it was marked the end of something of a comeback season. Last year we danced out only three times. We didn’t do our usual appearances at the Much Ado In the Garden event at Cutler Botanic Garden in Binghamton, nor the Harvest Home Tour — leaving the Harridans to do both without us.

This year we did:

• The Gilbertsville Tour in April. Video here.
• In June, our first appearance at Binghamton First Friday since 2019.
• Much Ado, rescheduled from July 20 to September 21 due to severe damage to the garden in a microburst earlier in July.
• The Hudson Valley Garlic Festival in Saugerties with New York’s Bouwerie Boys Morris Dancers on September 27 — two danceouts in the same week!
• Two weeks later, the Harvest Home Tour.

Five danceouts in one season may not seem like much, to those on some large, active morris sides, but for us that’s up there with most previous years the past couple decades, and a real boost above 2024. On top of that, last January we performed our mumming play (as the Champeons of Folly) at the Ithaca Twelfth Night celebration for the first time since 2020 — and the previous month we did it at the Cranberry Coffeehouse’s holiday concert by Bells and Motley, the first time we’ve ever done it twice in the holiday season.

The decreased activity in 2024 had to do with the state of the team: We’ve lost several members in recent years, and we couldn’t get six dancers and a musician for Much Ado or the Harvest Home. This year, we unfortunately don’t have any more members than last year. What we do have is more repertoire. We’ve been working up several dances for three or four dancers. We now have three Ducklington style dances for small sets, one Chipping Campden dance we can do for four by replacing the final hey with whole rounds, and several Bampton style dances without heys that can be done by four. Armed with these, we can do danceouts even if we only have four dancers available.

Which only happened once! For Gilbertsville, First Friday, and the Harvest Home, appearances by away members and unexpected visits by mostly inactive members got us up to six dancers. We had five for the Garlic Festival (would have had six but for covid) but were able to borrow dancers from the Bouwerie Boys to fill out the sets. Only Much Ado was a four-dancer event, and it worked out fine.

Of course this isn’t ideal. We’d like to get some new members and get our numbers back up. (So join us!). But it was still great to dance out as often as we did. We’ll be mumming again around the holidays, and then bring on the 2026 dancing season!