Morris Dancers Ditch Black Face Paint and Swap It For Blue Over Racist Concerns | UK News

A group of Morris dancers from Hampshire swapped their traditional black face paint for blue, over concerns over racism.

The men of Hook Eagle Morris played near the village of Hook in Hampshire Saturday to mark the dawn of May 1, in their first show since January 2020.

Last June, a multi-county group, the Joint Morris Organizations, released a statement calling on dance groups to stop using full black makeup in response to the Black lives matter movement following the death of George Floyd.

John Ellis, 70, who dances with the Hook Eagle Morris Men has been with the group since its inception as a religious group in 1991, and describes the movement as “by far the biggest, if not really the only change we’ve seen. . “.

He added that other troops from the UK have changed their face paint to different colors, some opting for green, while a group from Kent are now using black and yellow stripes.

Mr Ellis says the tradition of using black face paint derived from the days when poor farm workers in the 1400s used soot to disguise themselves so they could beg – which was illegal at the time .

This tradition “died out”, according to Mr Ellis, but it was revived in the 1970s by the Morris border dancers, a type of dance that originated on the border between England and Wales.

“We adopted this idea because dancing is really easy, a lot of fun, and we quite like the idea of ​​dancing in disguise.”

Only three people went to see the Hook Eagle Morris Men dance on Saturday morning, including a photographer and a cafe owner, Mr Ellis saying it was “pretty good” considering the show was at 5am.