Charles River Rapper

Who we are

Charles River Rapper (CRR) is a Boston-area rapper sword team.  The team was founded in 1996 by Margaret Keller Dimock, a former member of Chesapeake Rapper from 1993-1995. She began to learn rapper there and more at Pinewoods during CDS and CDSS sessions. When she moved to Boston, she discovered that there were relatively few rapper teams and decided to start one. The team began with just one routine, and focused on that for several years.

Currently, the dancers are all women; our musician is male.  We are very proud that we are truly an intergenerational team; we have had grandmothers on the team, and currently range in age from teenagers to adults with grown children.  We also have a mother and daughter on the team.  All of this provides us with a wonderful community within the team, which is a real strength. We see that most other rapper teams are comprised of all adolescents or all adults.  The team welcomes new members, inviting people who have expressed interest to attend practices for a few weeks so that they may explore this dance form more closely.

We also have a tremendous background in dance and the wider folk community. Some of us have been involved with the folk community since childhood; others have become connected in the past several years as adults.

Our team includes the following 11 members:

· Sarah Courtney, graduate student (out of area for school, but attends when schedule permits)

· Margaret Keller Dimock

· Jonathan Gilbert (our wonderful musician)

· Jennie Hango

· Nancy Knight

· Sarah Knight, middle school student

· Margot Leonard, college student (out of area for school, but attends when schedule permits)

· Liz Lewis

· Kyla Mackay-Smith, graduate student

· Peggy Marcus

Charles River Rapper rehearses weekly.  Practice is usually held at Margaret’s house in Concord, where a special raised dance surface was built in the basement.  When Margaret is not available to host, we rehearse at Peggy’s house in Newton.

If you are interested in learning more, please send an email to: Margaret K Dimock

The Team, Lilac Sunday 2007

Front Row l-r: Sarah, Peggy, Kyla, Back Row: Jennie, Margaret, Liz and baby Mariana, Nancy, Jonathan, and Sarah

What we do

One of the hallmarks of Charles River Rapper is the blending of the traditional with unexpected elements.  A rapper dance normally has five people dancing at a time to a jig tune, which has a 6/8 time signature. Some traditional teams perform very quickly, others more slowly.  In addition to this more traditional style, we have explored adding people, and created a dance for six people. After several years with these two dances we added two dances to non-traditional rhythms, one to a slip jig (9/8 time), and one to a completely different rhythm, a devetorka.  This is a rhythm from the Balkan region of Europe, and we created a new base step for the dance; in addition, we adapted traditional figures to fit the time signature and the fit and flow of the dance. Interestingly, this dance—along with the dance performed in 9/8—were both choreographed by the team, and have evolved over time.  Most recently we performed the devetorka in western Massachusetts at a morris ale and enjoyed a stunning response to it.  Picture 150 morris dancers finishing lunch, a break in the singing, and a request for us to perform this dance.  The unique rhythms and steps we performed grabbed everyone’s attention, and by the end of the dance we had five musicians working with ours to learn the tune, and at least 10 dancers working on the basic step we had created.

Thus, we now have a repertoire of four dances, only one of which is danced with five people to a jig tune.  The others vary in one or more ways:

· Charles River Dance is our most traditional dance performed to a standard jig, and based on figures from Swallwell (from Chesapeake Rapper).

· Quicksilver 6 is done to a jig tune, but it features six dancers rather than the traditional five. Several figures from this dance were learned at Pinewoods from Rhett Krause, who first suggested the idea of a whole dance with six dancers, not with five and a fool dancing in and out of the set.

· Newcastle on Danube is danced to a Balkan rhythm known as a devetorka, with an unusual stepping pattern.

· Fast Food is done to a slip jig (9/8 rhythm). As the names of many of the figures are akin to food, the title of the dance was clear.  Figures include double latte no whip, (golden) arches, donuts, etc.

Many traditional rapper dances have a pattern of verse-chorus-verse-chorus, where the “chorus” is a repeating figure and the “verse” features a series of different figures.  Ironically we use this traditional approach only in our most non-traditional dance, the devetorka. We enter into a swinging basket figure three different ways, from different figures which are parts of the verses. The other dances explore shapes, including lines, circles, cogs in gears, two Ds back to back, etc.

Where we dance

CRR dances regularly in the Boston area and beyond.  We love to dance out in public and bring this type of dance to a wider audience.  Some of our performances have included the following:

· NEFFA (April)

· Kettle of Fish Ale (metro Boston area, May, day before Lilac Sunday)

· Lilac Sunday (May)

· Harvest Tour (Concord, MA, usually October; hosted by Ha’Penny Morris)

· NOMAD (November)

· Midwinter gathering (December, hosted by Commonwealth Morris Men)

· Spontaneous dance-outs in the metro Boston area

· London Ale (Ontario, Canada)

· Toronto Ale (Ontario, Canada)

· Half Moon Sword Ale, New York, NY

· Harvest Ale (western Massachusetts)

The team has been invited to the 5th International Sword Spectacular in York, England, from May 23-26, 2008 (see http://www.swordspec.org for details).  We are thrilled about attending this event, as it will allow us to meet teams from the UK, the rest of Europe, and North America; to learn from them; and to share our dances with them.  We will also be able to forge connections with these teams, so that we might be able to host them if they come to the US on a tour at some point in future.  As of mid-November 2007, 20 European and North American teams had registered, along with 30 UK teams.