How the Abbotts Bromley Horn Dance Came to Revels

Let’s say you are trying to create a really exciting celebration of the winter solstice that will appeal to people of all ages. Do you include an ancient ritual dance from a village in England featuring six “deer” and four bizarre figures quietly weaving through the shadows in a serpentine line, then advancing towards one another and falling back in a hypnotic pattern to the sound of a lilting yet haunting melody?

That’s exactly what John Langstaff did.

Such a strange and haunting spectacle might seem an odd choice for a joyous festivity, especially since it was never a winter tradition at all. But the magic of Revels has always involved a different sort of programming logic that defies conventional wisdom.

The genius of Jack Langstaff was largely in trusting his instincts to weave seemingly disparate elements into a convincing, powerful and often surprising fabric.

The Abbotts Bromley Horn Dance has deep roots in England but has put down new roots in America. The dance from the Staffordshire village of Abbotts Bromley that collector Cecil Sharp first described in the early 20th century has taken on a parallel life in this country with somewhat different traditions attached. In Abbotts Bromley the English villagers dance all day in broad daylight, always on the Monday after the first Sunday after September 4.

The most striking difference, though, is the tune and its tempo. The English version is commonly danced as a “casual-looking jogtrot,” to quote Douglas Kennedy, to “Yankee Doodle” or “Pop Goes the Weasel” or some other popular tune at about 108 beats per minute. This is significantly faster than the walk-like style and tempo (about 84 beats per minute) of the tune that we know so well in Revels.

The story of how this mysterious-sounding tune became associated with the dance is told by Kennedy, who succeeded Sharp as the director of the English Folk Dance and Song Society and who also befriended and guided Jack Langstaff for many years. As he wrote in the 1984 Cambridge Christmas Revels program book, Kennedy says Sharp received a hand-written note from an “elderly cleric” familiar with the Abbotts Bromley Tradition, calling it the “Horn Dance Tune.” Sharp and Kennedy both embraced the tune immediately. When they first danced to it, Kennedy says the dance and tune “set an atmosphere of magic and mystery.” Sharp, who was greatly moved by the performance, said, according to Kennedy, “I knew the tune was magic, but I had no idea what it might do to the dance.”

This is the dance and tune that a 14-year-old John Langstsaff first witnessed at Pinewoods Dance Camp in Massachusetts. It was May Gadd who introduced the dance to Pinewoods, where it became a tradition long before it entered the Revels repertoire. There it was always danced at dusk, with dancers emerging from the woods, and this is the effect that is evoked with the low lighting that Langstaff insisted on (to the chagrin of costume and lighting designers) for the Revels stage.

“It's the magic and hush it instills in the audience,” says Carol Langstaff, who created the Revels with her father. The contrast with the more boisterous parts of the production is important, she says. The “quietness gets us back in touch with ritual,” which is such a core value in Revels.

Although the Horn Dance is danced around the U.S., Revels is probably the only staged performance of it. Where a purist might object to such a ritual dance being reenacted on the stage, the effect is quite the opposite for most. One dancer, quoted by Rhomylly Forbes in her book Links in a Thousand-Year-Old Chain: The Abbotts Bromley Horn Dance in America, puts it this way:

“When you do it in Revels, it's set up, theatrical, but it's an extremely powerful part of a drama&ellips; It's an incredibly powerful experience for the dancers. It's a unique experience to be part of it.

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George Emlen, Musical Director, Revels, Inc.