Category Archives: Dance Outs

Public appearances.

Chippenham Folk Festival

Once more, back to an event that was a regular in the Havoc calendar in pre-pandemic days. The weather did its bit, and we danced.

May Morning

Next on the list of things we haven’t done for a while – May Morning. Starting in the Botanic Gardens at 05:15.

From there it was on to join the throng at Radcliffe Square, and the to the Bridge of Sighs and along Broad Street, finishing with a large and confused massed Bonny Green outside St Johns.

More from Folk Weekend Oxford

How strange, and how delightful, to be back at Oxford Folk Weekend. Bonn Square, Asmolean Steps and outside the Natural History Museum, it’s great to be dancing in front of something like an audience again.

Congratulations to Bridget, Louis and Josh. Talented new Havocs!

Hogacre Wassail

If you have an apple orchard, and especially if you’re hoping to get some cider from it, then one tactic to ensuring a good harvest is to Wassail it. Briefly, this consists of alternately bribing the trees with gifts of toast dipped in cider, and frightening evil spirits with noise and ructions.

Over at Hogacre, we’ve been assisting doggedly wassailing their orchard for some years. As far as I know, none of the trees have yet to produce fruit. Obviously without our efforts things would be in an even more parlous state.

As usual, this year we did a few dances while the crowd waited for darkness to arrive.

Keeping near the fire
Keeping near the fire
Constant Billy
Constant Billy

Then in the gloaming we head over to the smallest tree in the orchard, where master of ceremonies Tim Healy explains wassailing and related customs, and leads the crowd in singing and noise.

Tim Healy explains
Tim Healy explains