Every part of the world has its own traditional dances. One of the very best of these is the rapper sword dance from Durham and Northumberland in the North-East of England.
Probably most people, if asked about English traditional dance, would think of Morris dancing. On the other hand, if you mention sword dancing they would think of the Scots and their sword dancing. The rapper sword dance is, for practical purposes, unrelated to either of these, although it has obvious connections with the Longsword dances favoured a little to the South in Yorkshire.
There's not a lot I can say to describe the dance to you if you've never seen it, and if you have, I'd be wasting my breath anyway. Suffice it to say that it is the most exciting of the dances to come from Great Britain; at its best it can reduce an audience to a state of spellbound awe, leaving them easy prey for the one taking the hat round afterwards.
Of course to achieve this standard of excellence takes hours of dedicated practice. In an effort to maintain the highest of standards in rapper dancing, regular competitions are held, the most recent of these being the Dancing England Rapper Tournament (DERT).
The most recent of these was held in Greenwich, London, on the 4th March 2000. There may be some photos of this available soon, but in the meantime, here is a collection of photos of last year's competition, held in Newcastle on March 6th 1999.
It's organised roughly in the order that the photos were taken. The general headings refer to what was going on at the time in the competition, although I was trying to make sure I took pictures of the rest of what was happening. The point here is that you may see pictures of people classified under the name of a different team than their own.
Unfortunately I didn't get any pictures of Faithful City; hopefully John got some for the official DERT99 site
Please also visit John Asher's Official DERT99 Web page
He also hosts The NUT