Yorkshire Border and Clog Morris Sides Tour to Reconnect Rural Communities

16 October 2026

Morris dance sides are hitting the road in Yorkshire this summer, bringing traditional Border and clog dance to village pubs, halls and green spaces across the region as they tour to reconnect with rural communities.

The joint tour blends English Border Morris, associated with the Welsh border counties, with the energetic clog traditions of northern England. Dance teams will perform at a variety of venues, from country pubs to summer fairs, concluding four weeks of touring that began on 4th May 2024.

The participating Border Morris sides are Yorkshire Coast, Ramshackle and Thieving Magpie. They will be joined by Yorkshire Chandelier Clog, whose repertoire includes dances from the North West of England, USA, and self-penned routines. The dance forms on show will range from sword dances and mummers plays to the rhythmic step patterns of clog.

Tour highlights

Highlights include a mid-May visit to the village of Bainbridge, with an informal music and song session at the Temperance Hall pub in the evening. The tour concludes with performances at various village halls and a square near Skipton on 1st June 2024.

The tour will celebrate the public, community-facing role of Morris dance. Summertime tours to rural villages, enabling local people to engage with living traditional dance, are a common element of the Morris calendar. Wath Morris, a Border side that has danced with Yorkshire Chandelier regularly since 1975, has touring as a scheduled part of their annual programme, with a "Morris Tour of Upper Wensleydale" central to their activities.

The organizers highlight the goodwill and opportunity to engage with local people and culture that a dance tour brings, reconnecting Morris traditions to the rural border communities that they evolved in.

"This tour is a chance to bring the joy of live, characterful dance to some of the most rural parts of the UK," says Siobhan O'Riordon of Yorkshire Coast Morris. "We hope that the dances and the characters we bring enhance community and cultural engagement with these living dance forms."

The tour is part of a wider restart of the Morris calendar, as, after two years of limited activity, sides began to reconnect in person. Teams usually confirm their summer performance schedule by April, with the season in full swing across the UK by May. While the sight of enthusiasts dancing in squares and pubs across the country might be familiar in urban areas, rural touring remains a key aspect of the Morris tradition.

"Touring is part of the social glue that holds the Morris world together. When participation wanes or the dance scene struggles, local sides build new links by taking to the road and dancing at new venues - a festival, a village green, or a community hall," says a spokesperson from the Morris Federation. "There is also a historic tradition in some areas of Morris dancing being itinerant, with Molly dancing tours of the mining villages in the 1920s being one notable example."

As summer brings village halls and fairs to life across the North, a resurgence of Morris activity seems likely. After two difficult COVID-19 affected years, audiences are delighted to reconnect with the spontaneous, engaging dance forms that thrive in these rural settings, with the revivers of these traditions showing no signs of slowing down.