Quentin Tarantino would have been (almost) proud. It all started with a secret photo-shoot in a highly cool location, involved a sharply dressed young rap star, gorgeous musical divas and……..two Morris Dancers……oh well, perhaps you can’t have everything (George Clooney for example)……or maybe you can?

The truth is we were delighted and very honoured to be asked to perform for the second Big Busk to be held in Shrewsbury town centre on Sat 5th April 2014.

We jumped at the invitation to be a small part of the amazing group of, musicians, singers, dancers, drummers, magicians, animal experts, yoga…erm…practitioners, poets, readers, spoon players and street artistes who turned out in huge numbers to support the worthy cause of The Shrewsbury Ark.

It being our first dance-out of the new 2014 season we were very excited to be able to include three new men (Mike, Richard and a new Tom) in the ranks of The Bull and Pump Morris Men. The new ladies who have joined the Shrewsbury Lasses are working hard at practice and are just waiting for their kit before they join us dancing in public too, which is also very exciting.

Photo courtesy of Simon Jones

We were allocated two 20 minute spots in The Square and Pride Hill which were ideal for “blooding” (or should that be sticking?) our new dancers. Large crowds gathered to watch both performances and we were delighted to find that lots of people engaged with us and came to chat before, during and after the dances. We love that!

Apart from a tumble, a wardrobe malfunction and a Mexican stand-off with a group of mediaeval re-enactors (in the nicest possible way….we took their photos and they stood down) the afternoon was terrific and we were pleased to maintain the high standard of all of the some 90 acts who performed throughout the day.

The dancing and clogging was great, the musicians as always were superb, the team-work was brilliant and our new members were absolutely fabulous! It was sad that one or two of our regular team were injured and could not take part but some joined us anyway, which was lovely and we hope they will all be back dancing with us very soon.

A great start to 2014, after which a tired but very happy Shrewsbury Morris piled into a Winnebago and headed off into the Mexican sunset….well…..all points Shrewsbury anyway…….and not a vampire in sight!

Shrewsbury Morris are sponsored by the wonderful (and local) Pipekit and Battlefield Printing Company.