05/01/2020
Traditional English May Day celebrations, including Morris dancing and folk music:
Live streamed on Whitstable Jack in the Green’s page https://www.facebook.com/Whitstable-Jack-in-the-Green-100375881612669/ : The Virtual Whitstable May Day, 1st May 2020!! (featuring Alan Prosser, John Jones and Ian Telfer)
Programme of events on Friday 1st May 2020
Noonish – 1pm:
Whitstable May Day throughout the years so far… - a collection of photographs and videos of many May Days past, collated, directed and produced by film maker Josh Alderman, Dixie’s grandson. Pictures and videos have been sent from morris dancers, musicians, family and friends from all over the country – thanks to them all!
1pm – 2pm
The Arrival of the Jack in the Green and Lockdown procession 2020, accompanied by the Whitstable Hooden Horse and solo morris dancer:
* Arrival of the Jack in the Green - photographs and film footage as The Jack dances through the morris dancers to head up the procession, from the Duke of Cumberland Hotel to Harbour Street.
* The 2020 procession on 1st May - a film of the procession route in lockdown by James Child and Laura Bailey, featuring the winning poster of the children’s painting competition 2019, organised by the Whitstable and Herne Bay Lions Club, and the unveiling of the New Jack, an art work commissioned for Dixie and May Day, by Margate based artist Charlie Evaristo - Boyce.
* Being Horse - The Whitstable Hooden Horse’s story - a strange sensory experience of being a hooden horse, made by James Frost and Sonia Overall.
* The 2020 Whitstable morris processional dance - choreographed and performed by Emily Finnis, inspired by Oyster Morris and Sarah Laslett and filmed by Julia Finnis.
2pm – 3pmish
* Whitstable May song:
Cathy Lesurf & John Jones will lead the singing of the Whitstable May song – we hope you will all join in at home!
* Interview via Zoom:
James Child, current Jack in the Green and former Robin Hood and Oyster Morris dancer, will interview organiser extraordinaire, Dixie Lee (formerly Fletcher), along with Cathy Lesurf, John Jones, Alan Prosser and Ian Telfer - of Fiddler’s Dram, Whitstable Oyster Ceilidh Band, Oyster Morris, Albion Band and Oysterband fames. This illustrious cast reinvented and revived the Whitstable May Day procession in 1976 and will be joined by Jo Fletcher, one of the founder members of Oyster Morris, all of whom were an integral part of the legendary Dukes’ Folk - one of the most successful folk clubs of the 1970’s and early 1980’s based at the Duke of Cumberland, in the heart of Whitstable’s town centre.
