The Wayward Youths of Morris 2004 Tour Highlights   Click here for a complete schedule

The Aaron Highlights of the Tour

[editor's note: These pictures have all been moved... sorry about that.   You can find all the pictures here]

By Aaron Marcus

Every moment of time in the tour was infinite!

In Lake George, we cooked yummy inexpensive food, rolled on the floor laughing to a game of psychiatrist, all sat on the dock icing our shin splints in the cold lake, went canoeing at midnight singing softly to a full moon, jammed to folk tunes to a full orchestra including 3 (!!!) accordions and Andrew's new Doumbek, sang so many many folk songs and popular songs with huge harmonious chords, and of course we learned and practiced dances.

In New York City, we danced in Central park at Bethesda fountain (where Sam made a surprise visit), danced Ascot, Ducklington, Upton on Severn, Badby, Bledington and Rapper sword traditions to a wonderful orchestra of music, couple danced around a tree, learned a wonderful 12 person dance with Ring'o bells (a local New York team), posed in awkward positions for a newspaper photo, walked around singing a lot more, made a people pile, went to the contra dance at which we began a mission to get people to smile, and ate ice cream.

In Princeton, we danced with two local teams around the city, doing a quick rapper dance on this really cool pedestal, and ate ice cream. We stayed overnight at the Barbours' house, dancing the Abbot's Bromley and Shepherd's Hey with their three adorable little daughters and singing and partying with the adults. Six of us jumped in their 68 degree pool and did a DUCKlington dance. For those of you who know Ducklington, it has lots of capers where you get to splash the water really hard! Heeheheheeheee.

In Baltimore, we performed at the English County Dance, practiced in the park across from Andrew's apartment and got amused looks from some of the drivers, danced spontaneously on street corners, educated more people about Morris dancing (actually lots of people already knew!), overheard an English guy saying with disdain "Oh God, they have them here too!", and danced in all the wonderful parks of Baltimore. When we were too tired and hot to move, we played music and clogged and wildly square danced! We sang endlessly on the train going back to Suzanne's house, ate a delicious dinner cooked by Suzanne's mother, listened to the lovely and bizarre sound of 17-year cicadas (which even the noise of our bells couldn't compete with). In the evening we danced out with Charm City rapper dance team, and slept in close quarters ignoring any need for personal space.

In Washington, we made garlands of clover flowers to wear, we made a vodka watermelon, we swore at Reagan for dying at such an inconvenient time (some of our dance permit locations were canceled), we danced in Dupont Circle for a wonderful audience and basked in the shade. My dad lives only a block from the park, but alas he is in Bruxelles right now so he could not see us. We danced on the steps of the Jefferson Memorial for quite a few hours (a beautiful location and perfect marble surface for dancing a hambo!), and then danced with the local team (Foggy Bottom), and then danced the next day in Alexandria all up and down King St. We played in the sprinklers at Sarah's house and performed beautifully at the contra dance in the evening (it was an open band night, so I even got to play 3 songs on the piano!). We watched "Rock my World", which is a really bad movie but it has the Toronto Morris Men in it (yayy!!).

At Meredith's farm, we listened to the amazing music of the singing group Finest Kind, performed, contra danced, did some group vocal improvisation, did some group ham boning with singing, and ate lots of yummy food. At midnight, we took a walk through the labyrinth, sang "De Pacem Cordeum", and did the Abbot's Bromley all the way back to the house and through the living room.

And this year it even decided not to rain on us! And my shin splints were not so bad at all! But many unfortunately other people on the team did not bide so well with injuries.