Guise dancing (sometimes known as goose or geese dancing) is a folk practice celebrated between Christmas Day and Twelfth Night (traditionally also Plough Monday, and some parish feasts) in Cornwall, UK. The principal activities associated with guise dancing are the performance of 'traditional' Christmas plays such as Duffy and the Bucca or St George and the Turkish Knight and traditional Cornish dance, music and song. The performers were dressed in a disguise to hide their identity allowing them to perform in an outlandish or mischievous manner in the hope of receiving payment of food or money.
Read more about Guise Dancing: Historical Description, Modern Guise Dancing, BBC Recording
Famous quotes containing the words guise and/or dancing:
“A man can go from being a lover to being a stranger in three moves flat ... but a woman under the guise of friendship will engage in acts of duplicity which come to light very much later. There are different species of self-justification.”
—Anita Brookner (b. 1938)
“It may be possible to do without dancing entirely. Instances have been known of young people passing many, many months successively, without being at any ball of any description, and no material injury accrue either to body or mind; Mbut when a beginning is made—when felicities of rapid motion have once been, though slightly, felt—it must be a very heavy set that does not ask for more.”
—Jane Austen (1775–1817)