The Outside Capering Crew Interesting facts

An Argentinian dancer in Belgium asked us, 'Why do you dance with chickens? Is it a tradition?' Her Belgian host replied: 'Because it's easier than dancing with elephants.'

The Crew’s first dance was created on a farm track in Toddington, Bedfordshire, and given its premiere in front of a few thousand people at Sidmouth International Festival in 1996. The producers forgot to mention there would be a large maypole on stage, surrounded by other dancers.   

Co-founder Simon Pipe secured a full week’s booking at Sidmouth 1997 when the team had no name and a repertoire of one dance. He then went to live on the extremely remote South Atlantic island of St Helena, having forgotten to mention the booking to his future team mates. This was unhelpful.

All Crew dancers are under 5’7” in height. This is deliberate.

The team was all-male until 1998. When Sue Graham turned out for her first Crew performance wearing earrings and make-up in team colours, it dawned on us that the nature of the team had changed.   

The main elements of The Crew’s showpiece dance, Four Up, were written 15 years before four dancers could be found who were prepared to learn it.

Asking Sue to make four full-size hobby horses for a one-off dance seemed perfectly reasonable at the time.

The Crew is probably the only morris team to have performed The Upton-upon-Severn Stick Dance on horseback. The dance actually comes from Essex.

When we were flown out to Dubai and put up at the new five-star Fairmont hotel, along with the rap star Shaggy, we had to share our suites with our horses.

In Dubai, a king-sized bed was carried on stage in the middle of our dance. We were so stunned we forgot to climb into it. 

One of our happiest experiences was getting dozens of children on stage at Sidmouth to join in our silly Shepherd’s Hey dance… and persuading many more grown-ups, watching from the hillside, to join in the clapping and the stepping while sitting on their bottoms. This was joyous.

Ours may be the world’s only rubber-chicken orchestra. Instruments include the Swannee chicken, the chickazoo, chicken drumsticks, and the honky chicken (with a clown hooter protruding from its rear). 

American yard brooms are not suitable for broom dancing. In Vermont, we had to dance with foam mops, which are not really very good.

We thank the folk duo Life and Times for our Pint Pots Dance tune. It celebrates a witch who fries pancakes under Conger Hill in Toddington, where our earliest material was created. None of our dances are edible.

We nearly called ourselves The Outside Capering Company. It’s a shame we didn’t, because our website address is now www.capering.co.uk

A caper is a morris step, mentioned by Shakespeare. “Outside capering” is a pun, which we are always happy to explain. 

Simon and musician Lawrence Wright once appeared in a music hall show at Chippenham Folk Festival as Whittle and Dub, after the traditional morris instrument. They were introduced as Wattle and Daub. 

Morris dancing is terribly old. No one knows where it comes from, and no one knows where it is going.