George Butterworth famously claimed ‘I’m not a musician, I’m a professional dancer,’ and commented that dancing gave him more artistic fulfilment than anything else. In 1911, Butterworth’s passion led him to become a co-founder of the English Folk Dance Society along with Cecil Sharp, who was 16 years his senior, and the sisters Helen and Maud Karpeles. The society’s purpose was to preserve and promote English folk dances in their original forms, and in 1912 and 1913 Butterworth devoted much of his time to collecting morris and sword dances with Sharp. 

Butterworth was a talented dancer and one of six members in Sharp’s original morris-dancing team. Their performances during December 1912 at Stratford and the Savoy Theatre, which Granville Barker attended, are credited with prompting the important if short-lived historical movement that brought folk dancing to the world of Shakespeare. Footage from 1912, shot on a Kinora machine, survives to show Butterworth morris dancing alongside Cecil Sharp and the Karpeles sisters. These clips are the earliest known examples of English folk dance captured on film. Despite the lack of sound, the footage is a hugely important resource for exploring Butterworth’s active involvement in the folk-dance revival. The film, streamed below, shows three separate clips of Butterworth: one minute into the film we see Butterworth dancing alone to the traditional ‘Molly Oxford’; at around three-and-a-half minutes Butterworth joins Cecil Sharp and the Karpeles sisters in dancing ‘Hey boys up go we’; and the film concludes with Butterworth again dancing alone. In the solo clips, Butterworth dances with handkerchiefs,yet he often danced with swords and sticks.

Butterworth was also an active member of the Folk-Song Society, which was founded in 1898. From 1904, the society became the focus of the new wave of folksong collectors led by Cecil Sharp and including Ralph Vaughan Williams. George Butterworth joined in 1906 while he was at Oxford. Butterworth’s keen involvement in the collection and preservation of English folksong clearly influenced his style of composition. Tragically, Butterworth’s involvement with the English Folk Dance Society and the Folk-Song Society was prematurely ended when he was killed at the Somme in 1916, alongside half of the members of Sharp’s original morris -dancing team. However, Butterworth’s legacy lives on in two operas by Holst and Vaughan Williams that were inspired by Shakespeare. As demonstrated in these operas, Holst and Vaughan Williams could not ignore Butterworth’s comment that ‘if ever the opportunity occurs for a truly national production of ballet or opera, the success of the undertaking will rest in the hands of those who have mastered the technique and absorbed the spirit of our English dances and songs’.

The Folk-Song Society and the English Folk Dance Society merged in 1932, thus the society is currently referred to as the English Folk Dance and Song Society. The society is still active today and has over 4000 members. It is run from Cecil Sharp House in North London, which also acts as a venue to host concerts, lectures and an array of social dances including morris dancing.