How to..
Each week, our entertainments reporter tries out a new activity. See the latest How to.. This page last updated: Monday, April 3, 2006.
How to.. be a rapper dancer
SWORD PLAY: Entertainments reporter Duncan Hall takes the rap at Wood Newton village hall. (6AL0223506) Pictures: ANDY LAITHWAITE
WHEN she was younger my sisters got into a minor craze of doing cats cradles with a long piece of string tied into a loop.
If you have never done it before a cat’s cradle is basically a way of creating different and interesting shapes using just that piece of string tangled in different ways around your fingers.
When I joined the Rockingham Rapper and Step I found myself being reminded of those shapes and the complicated designs they used to create.
But rather than string to make the designs the dancers used two-handled 2ft-long rapper swords made out of spring steel, which were constantly kept linked together by hand throughout the dance.
No-one knows for certain what the swords were originally used for but the popular theory is that they were the implements used to wipe the sweat off pit ponies’ backs.
It was up to the dancers to link the swords together and bend them into shapes ranging from the toast rack to the coach and horses to a breast plate called the Haymarket.
Before I visited the rappers I had spent an evening with the Wype Doles Longswords, which had used longer one-handled swords. But if I had thought this group would be the same, I couldn’t have been more wrong.
The dance itself, which like the long-sword originates in the north-east, is performed in a much tighter group of five people – after all, you are only ever about 2ft from your nearest partner.
When the swords bend together you are even closer together, in what can be quite an energetic and complicated dance. If you don’t go the right way you can end up twisting yourself into a real knot – as I found out a couple of times.
There was also a slight element of danger to the dancing – as if anyone lets go of one of the spring steel swords mid-dance there is the distinct possibility they could fly back into your face and give you a nasty bruise – as several of the dancers have previously discovered!
There were some similarities though – the dance was performed to a constant step, and frequently ended with the creation of a star-shape made by locking the swords together.
The difference with the step was that it was very similar to a clog dance – as you tapped your feet on the ground to make a rhythm to accompany the dance.
We were dancing to a fiddle played by Pete Shaw, who also accompanied the other side of the group – the step.
For as well as rapper dancing, the group, which has been together since October 2004, also performs energetic Appalachian folk dancing, which originally comes from the Appalachian mountains of North America.
This dance really is something to see – as anyone who has seen it at the Straw Bear Festival will testify. Whereas some folk dances can seem quite slow and methodical, Appalachian is literally performed with a skip in your step and a real joie de vivre – in a similar vein to Irish dancing but not with your arms by your side.
As an investigative How To reporter, I gave some of the steps a try – without working in the actual moves themselves – and soon found myself exhausted by the constant movement and speed that the tempo went at.
If you want to see the real dancers in action, they will be performing both rapper dancing and Appalachian dancing with the Wype Doles at the Baskerville’s, at Baston, near Bourne on Tuesday.