The English Folk Dance and Song Society (EFDSS) was formed in 1932 when two organisations merged: the Folk-Song Society and the English Folk Dance Society. The EFDSS, a member-based organisation, was incorporated as a Company limited by guarantee (No. 297142) in 1935 and became a Registered Charity (No. 305999) in England and Wales in 1963.
The Folk-Song Society, founded in London in 1898, focused on collecting and publishing, primarily folk songs of Britain and Ireland although there was no formal limitation. Participants included Lucy Broadwood, Kate Lee, Cecil Sharp, Ralph Vaughan Williams, George Butterworth, George Barnet Gardiner, Henry Hammond, Anne Gilchrist and Ella Leather.
The English Folk Dance Society was founded in 1911 by Cecil Sharp. Maud Karpeles was a leading participant. Its purpose was to preserve and promote English folk dances in their traditional forms, including Morris and sword dances, traditional social dances, and interpretations of the dances published by John Playford.
One of the greatest contributions that the EFDSS made to the folk movement, both dance and song, was the folk festival, starting with the Stratford-upon-Avon Festival in the 1940s and later festivals in Whitby, Sidmouth, Holmfirth, Chippenham and elsewhere.
Read more about English Folk Dance And Song Society: Publications, Recent Developments
Famous quotes containing the words english, folk, dance, song and/or society:
“On becoming soldiers we have not ceased to be citizens.”
—Oliver Cromwell’s Soldiers. Address, 1647, to the English Parliament. “Humble Representation.”
“Myths, as compared with folk tales, are usually in a special category of seriousness: they are believed to have “really happened,” or to have some exceptional significance in explaining certain features of life, such as ritual. Again, whereas folk tales simply interchange motifs and develop variants, myths show an odd tendency to stick together and build up bigger structures. We have creation myths, fall and flood myths, metamorphose and dying-god myths.”
—Northrop Frye (1912–1991)
“No imperfection in budded mountain,
Valleys breathe, heaven and earth move together,
daisies push inches of yellow air, vegetables tremble,
green atoms shimmer in grassy mandalas,
sheep speckle the mountainside, revolving their jaws with empty eyes,
horses dance in the warm rain,”
—Allen Ginsberg (b. 1926)
“I made my song a coat
Covered with embroideries
Out of old mythologies”
—William Butler Yeats (1865–1939)
“The war shook down the Tsardom, an unspeakable abomination, and made an end of the new German Empire and the old Apostolic Austrian one. It ... gave votes and seats in Parliament to women.... But if society can be reformed only by the accidental results of horrible catastrophes ... what hope is there for mankind in them? The war was a horror and everybody is the worse for it.”
—George Bernard Shaw (1856–1950)