Research
A Performance History of Morris Dancing
This project was funded by the European Union on a Marie Sklodowska-Curie Fellowship. Morris dancing is one of the most enduring and popular forms of folk dance in the British Isles, enjoying an almost uninterrupted tradition dating back to 1458. Kathryn has focused in this research on morris dancing in public settings: on the streets of London, in the theatre and in festival performances. As part of a broader oral/aural culture of music in the British Isles, the music of morris dancing is communal and participatory in style, rooted in local communities and connected to the natural environment. Kathryn identified a body of tunes which match the musical style of each context of Morris dancing as described by performers, audiences and critics. She then workshopped the music using a practice-based research approach on historical and modern folk instruments, in collaboration with dancers in her new ensemble, Talon.
Music and Festival Culture in Shakespearean Comedy
Kathryn’s PhD project was funded by the Australian Research Council Centre of Excellence for the History of Emotions. Her thesis presented a case for early modern festival practice being central to the representation of music in the theatre works of Shakespeare and his contemporaries. Using an interdisciplinary approach combining musicology, performance as research and comparative literary analysis, Kathryn showed that the wider musical culture of early modern festivals was communal, partipatory, localised and used as a means of connecting with the natural environment. Kathryn demonstrated in six case studies of Shakespearean comedies that this style of music is central to the dramaturgy of sound in early modern playtexts. This is work is important to Shakespeare’s musical dramaturgy because prior research has largely focused on the representation of elaborate and rhetorical/courtly styles of music in early modern theatre.
