‘For being lads from just farm working… it was really something’: an oral history recounting longsword dancing experiences in North East England

Since at least the nineteenth century, the folk practice of longsword dancing has remained a culturally significant act in the North East of England. Within this folk dancing tradition lie the temporally revivalist but characteristically traditionalist Loftus Sword Dancers, performing between the 1950s and 1990s. Influenced by the likes of Cecil Sharp, much longsword dancing literature has focused on the origin, survival, dissemination, development, and the choreography of the dance itself, with a deficit in the representation of dancers’ own lived experience. To compensate for this historiographic gap, this paper examines the experiences of the longest serving member of the Loftus group. Using the methods of oral history and previously untapped archival material, two unstructured interviews provide an additional source. The paper offers insight into the nuanced and impactful nature of dance on the lives of dancers, illustrating the ways in which this culture has suffused their everyday social experience.