There aren’t many certainties in life (apart from death and taxes) but the sun rising each day is reliable and perhaps we should thank Canberra’s Surly Griffin Morris Dancers for that.
Unbeknownst to many of us who hibernate in the cooler months, each year on the first of May the Surly Griffin Morris Dancers brave sub-zero temperatures atop Mt Ainslie – with no audience – to dance up the sun.
Canberra Morris dancer Karina Redpath said the wind chill factor was below zero and she was “absolutely freezing”.
“After the first dance I couldn’t feel my fingers and I had gloves on, it was that cold,” Karina said. “We do it every year and it’s so much fun.”
Dancing up the sun is an ancient English custom that may seem obsolete after 4.5 billion years of the sun reliably rising on Earth, however it’s the tradition that counts.
The Surly Griffins (understandably surly at an unearthly hour) do many unannounced seasonal dances each year – not just the National Folk Festival at Easter. Karine’s been Morris dancing since 1999.
“Morris dancing is mostly about different seasonal changes through the years and a lot of people associate it with the spring time – hence the flowers in the costume. Dancing up the sun in May is to bring about fertility in the crops,” Karina said.
“This [15th century] English tradition is done throughout the world and the story goes that if the Morris dancers don’t dance up the sun on the first of May, the sun won’t rise and the crops will fail.”
The Surly Griffins are about to mark the winter solstice with a dance in Curtin, and in previous years in spring, the Surly Griffin’s have danced (and drunk) to the health of the trees at an apple orchard near Braidwood.
“We used to do ‘wassailing’ [ancient custom of visiting orchards singing to the trees to promote a good harvest] after the winter, to wake up the trees,” Karina said. “You go and make lots of noise to wake up the trees. My husband [Ian] dresses up as a green man – a character that is part man, part tree – and he represents rebirth. It’s an ancient character from England and you’ll find there’s lot of carvings of the green man in old churches.”
The world keeps on turning and so too do the Surly Griffins, who recently danced at Bungendore’s harvest festival and the farmers’ markets. They’ve just applied to dance up Floriade’s tulips this spring.
The Surly Griffins have even adapted to modern 21st century Canberra life and this year danced on Braddon’s famous rainbow roundabout – for no apparent seasonal reason but just for fun.
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