On Saturday 20th April Sutton Masque and Hemlock Morris danced in Ely to celebrate our 10th of Anniversary of dancing, and we were completely blown away with our reception. By that I obviously mean that it was extremely windy!
We met outside Ely Cathedral at 10am, well a lot of us met at the car park before walking to the cathedral but hey, and started dancing on time, this is an unusual occurrence, and we hasten to add it is not indicative of future events. We were slightly hampered by the traffic jam impacting those trying to leave Sutton, but eventually everyone arrived.
After performing a double side Hells Belles with both sides fielding a team, we had a photo outside the cathedral and then moved on to somewhere a) hopefully less windy, b) that had coffee – yep, we were outside Costa Coffee. Here we had some veery appreciative audiences and we had three sets up for Much Wenlock which looked brilliant. Hemlock also led us in double set of Litchfield’s Vandals of Hammerwich which was fun for us.
We then moved to outside the War Memorial where a lot of people came from the Market to watch us and we had a great atmosphere until the rain drove us inside for our lunch break.
At 2pm we all made our way to the Mad Hatters Campsite to dance at the Green Oaks Gathering which had been organised by Hemlock Morris, and this was a really great little festival with the Mead stall being popular with the side. We started, this time, with a double Hells Belles and with another great audience danced for a little over half an hour before we unfortunately said goodbye to Hemlock Morris. They had been fantastic guests, and we always enjoy dancing with them and we look forward to seeing them again soon.
The side returned to Ely, to meet up with a few of our team who didn’t make it to thee festival and danced our final spot along the river side, before heading up to the Drayman’s Son for a beer and de-greening. We then moved onto the Lamb Hotel for a fantastic Celebration Meal, we couldn’t have been looked after better, before moving onto having a few more drinks in other local establishments to wind down the evening.
A big Thank You to Hemlock Morris for attending this day with us as well as all of our dancers and musicians and our audiences at all of our displays, without you all it wouldn’t have been the enjoyable day that it was. We now look forward to our Summer dance out programme starting with our first Wednesday dance out at the Chequers, and our May Morning Dance in the Dawn.
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