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Группа Learning English.

William: Hello and [bad word] to People and Places – the programme where you meet
someone remarkable every week.
My name’s William Kremer. Now the name of this programme, People and
Places, is particularly apt for today’s programme, because the person we’re
about to hear from has a special relationship to a particular part of England.
His name is Tony Forster and he’s the boss of The Pig [bad word] Molly Dancers.
Molly dancing is a traditional form of English folk dancing – but it’s not
something you see everywhere in England. Where is Molly dancing from?
Listen to Tony Forster and see if you can hear the answer:
Tony: Molly dancing is a form of dancing that used to be done in the Fens erm…
about a hundred years ago, two hundred years ago – and the Fens at that time
was lots of very isolated villages and droves – just one or two houses at the end
of a long road.
William: Did you hear the answer? Tony Forster said Molly dancing used to be done in
the Fens about two hundred years ago. At that time, villages in the Fens were
very isolated – they were very far away from other villages and towns.
Tony: Molly dancing is a form of dancing that used to be done in the Fens erm…
about a hundred years ago, two hundred years ago – and the Fens at that time
was lots of very isolated villages and droves – just one or two houses at the end
of a long road.
William: fen is a piece of very flat, wet ground. What we call ‘the Fens’ is a large area
in the East of England, covering parts of Cambridgeshire, Lincolnshire and
Norfolk. In the past, a great part of this area would flood every year, and the
villages and towns would [bad word] like little islands. This explains the isolation
of the Fens.
Today, the Fens are no longer very isolated, but because of their history, they
have kept a very strong sense of identity and tradition.
But although molly dancing is a tradition in the Fens, the Pig [bad word] Molly
Dancers aren’t content to simply carry on doing things they way they’ve
always been done. They have modernised molly dancing – they’ve changed it
slightly so that it’s more appealing to modern audiences. But how have they
modernised it? Listen to Tony Forster again:
Tony: We decided we needed to modernise it and the dances that were written down
are really very simple dances, so we decided if it was going to work for the 21st
century then it needed to be more interesting dances, more interesting
appearance and an emphasis on entertainment and making people go away
thinking, ‘Wow! We enjoyed that!’
William: Tony wants molly dancing to ‘work for the 21st century’. He said that his
dancers decided that if molly dancing was going to work for the 21st century,
then… then what? Listen again:
Tony: We decided we needed to modernise it and the dances that were written down
are really very simple dances, so we decided if it was going to work for the 21st
century then it needed to be more interesting dances, more interesting
appearance and an emphasis on entertainment and making people go away
thinking, ‘Wow! We enjoyed that!’
William: Tony said that if molly dancing was going to work for the 21st century, it
needed to consist of more interesting dances, more interesting appearance and
an emphasis on entertainment so that people go away from the dance, thinking
‘Wow! We enjoyed that!’
Well, you’ll know from the picture of the Pig [bad word] Molly Dancers on the
People and Places webpage that that their appearance is certainly very
‘interesting’. With their thick make up, big wigs and striking black and white
clothes, they look more like heavy metal rock stars than folk dancers! Why did
they decide to start wearing black and white? Well, Tony Forster has an answer
to that:
...