The Ceilidh Project
From June 2019 to March 2020, M@HoT hosted ceilidhs in village halls across Teesdale,
sharing our love for social dance and folk music.
Whapweasel at The Witham 14/03/20
For the last 5 years, M@HoT have taken our youth folk band, Cream Tees, to a UK folk festival each summer, as an opportunity to see and hear the traditional music they learn and play in a wider context. At the end of each trip, it is always the evening ceilidhs that receive the most praise and enthusiasm as we talk about what we enjoyed, as well as the ‘lightbulb moment’- that most of the music the band plays is originally designed to be dance to. Because of this, there was always a wish to programme similar events back at home.
In March 2019, with support from Northern Heartlands & County Durham Community Foundation’s ‘Community Initiatives Fund’, M@HoT launched The Ceilidh Project. Programmed as a series of 4 seasonal events, we were able to bring some of the best UK folk bands to Teesdale, to deliver a music masterclass, followed by a dance in the evening.
Our ceilidh and workshop programme were expertly led by:
with the fantastic Michelle Holding as our resident caller for the project.
We were also treated to excellent sound engineering by Tom Stanier.
(Above: Pons Aelius with workshop participants, Scarth Hall)
(Above: Kingsmen rapper dancing at Scarth Hall)
Alongside the ceilidhs and workshops, we were treated to top class interval entertainment. Traditional dance teams were invited to display during this time, which was particularly of interest to those involved in our Music for/Dancing to Music project.
We also engaged with local history, collaborating with other community projects. In the second ceilidh (422, Mickleton), The Northern Heartlands Singers and Cream Tees reunited to perform ‘Dragon’s Teeth and Waterfalls’, an original composition by Katie Doherty, written for our Eggleston Show Music Project about the Teesdale landscape.
In the final ceilidh (Whapweasel, The Witham), The Castle Players brought a series of oral histories interviews to life. The interviews were collected during the early stages of M@HoT's delivery between 2012-14 with local residents, exploring memories of folk music and social dance in the dales. These were edited together by Laurence Sachs to create a series of 7 vignettes that were shared in-between dances throughout the night.
