Modern Guise Dancing
There has been a rise of interest in Guise Dancing in Cornwall in recent years with new groups adopting the practice throughout Cornwall. The most notable being the Turkey Rhubarb band in Penzance, The St Ives Guisers and Pyba. The Turkey Rhubarb band and Pyba both regularly appear with 'Obby 'Osses, Penglaz and Pengyn respectively, both of which are the "Skull and pole" variety. Penglaz of course being most famous for its appearances at the Golowan festival in late June accompanied by the Golowan band.
Modern guise dancing can be divided into roughly three types of activities, firstly, large processional "carnival" parades which hundreds or even thousands take part, secondly smaller more intimate performances in public houses and the like and thirdly, bands of Christmas players who perform the Christmas plays described above. Many of the tunes now performed as part of Guise dancing are taken from the canon of Cornish traditional tunes and dances collected in the 1970s and 1980s by Merv and Alison Davy and others.
Most modern Guisers dress in "mock posh" costume or hand me downs decorated with ribbons and tatters. Masks of all types with the exclusion of modern fancy dress masks and the like are common.
Guise dancing is practised as part of the St Ives feast celebrations and forms the main part of the Montol Festival in Penzance.
Read more about this topic: Guise Dancing
Famous quotes containing the words modern, guise and/or dancing:
“The ancients of the ideal description, instead of trying to turn their impracticable chimeras, as does the modern dreamer, into social and political prodigies, deposited them in great works of art, which still live while states and constitutions have perished, bequeathing to posterity not shameful defects but triumphant successes.”
—Herman Melville (1819–1891)
“Shut out that stealing moon,
She wears too much the guise she wore
Before our lutes were strewn
With years-deep dust, and names we read
On a white stone were hewn.”
—Thomas Hardy (1840–1928)
“I avoid talking before the youth of the age as I would dancing before them: for if one’s tongue don’t move in the steps of the day, and thinks to please by its old graces, it is only an object of ridicule.”
—Horace Walpole (1717–1797)