What is Rapper?

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Rapper is a traditional dance form where dancers are connected by holding the swords in a circle. They perform figures and displays with percussive stepping between moves, without letting go of the swords. This exciting tradition has developed since the use of sprung steel swords has allowed for faster figures than the older style sword dancing which used longer, inflexible blades. Whip the Cat perform traditional rapper dances from the North East of England as well as self-penned dances which, whilst based on the traditional figures, have been developed by the team in innovative ways to create our own style.

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A rapper sword is a sprung steel blade, with a wooden handle at each end. They are not sharp but can give a good crack on the head if one is let go. A long accepted tradition is that any dancer letting go of a handle during a dance must buy the rest of the team a drink. There are over 30 of us so this is a costly mistake to make!

Musicians are vital to a rapper team, because live music is played for the dancers to perform to. The instruments we usually dance to include fiddle, accordion, melodeon, as well as the occasional viola or cello. The tunes are mainly in the style of traditional English music, in 6/8 or ‘jig’ time and are carefully selected to drive and enhance the dances.

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Characters in rapper are usually called a Tommy or a Betty. Their function is to clear a space for the dancers to perform in, and to entertain the audience. They often hand a hat round after a performance to collect money. In Whip the Cat, the main purpose of collecting money is to help keep the cost of taking part in this tradition as small as possible to make our team accessible to all.

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Clog 

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We also perform English Clog Stepping, with two of our routines taken from the repertoire of Pat Tracey, who originated from Nelson in East Lancashire. Her Old Lancs Heel & Toe style was traditionally danced by Lancashire cotton mill workers, with the sounds made by the clogs imitating those of weaving looms. Our third clog dance is a Lancashire Waltz by Sam Sherry, who was one of The Five Sherry Brothers, a famous Music Hall act in the 1930’s.

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Who are we?

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We are Whip the Cat Rapper and Clog, a team of female dancers with male and female musicians and Tommies from Nottingham. We were formed 20 years ago by a handful of members of Mortimer’s Morris who were idly chatting at a party about how they fancied having a go at rapper. For some reason, it still seemed like a good idea the next morning! Only two of that original group had ever done any rapper so most of the early practices were spent discussing what to call the team and deciding on a kit rather than getting on with any actual dancing!

 

On our name, you may be surprised to know that it has nothing to do with torturing animals! We spent much time leafing through Brewer’s Dictionary of Phrase and Fable to finally narrow the choice down to either ‘Scavenger’s Daughter’ (a gruesome medieval instrument of torture, made of metal and generating much blood) or ‘Whip the Cat’ which had many meanings; amongst them ‘to work hard as an itinerant tailor’, ‘to be idle on a Monday’ and ‘to get drunk’. Each of these meanings were quite fitting due to our obsession with kit, practising on a Monday night and being fond of a drink or several! We put it to the vote and became ‘Whip the Cat’!

 

From this beginning, we have built ourselves up to a premier level rapper team with around 30 members ranging from the ages of 20 to 63. Our dance experience is also wide ranging and we are very proud to be such a diverse, inclusive and thriving team. We work hard, still practising every Monday evening in Nottingham with a weekend practice once a month in different locations around the country which enables all our members to keep, and raise, our standard of dancing. Our repertoire currently includes 4 rapper dances; our DERT winning ‘Mrs Beeton’s How To Dance’ and 3 traditional dances – ‘Murton’, ‘Newbiggin’ and ‘Winlaton’ as well as several clog routines. 

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DERT history

 

Whip the Cat first went to DERT, as spectators, in 2000 when it was held in Greenwich. We first entered in Sheffield in 2002 where we came second to last in the ‘Open Evolved’ category. We learned a lot from this, continuing to educate ourselves in rapper by attending workshops, working with our great friends Stone Monkey on stepping and sword handling as well as watching other teams and forming bonds with them. We entered DERT every year from then (apart from 2007 when we hosted the competition) and took on board the judges’ comments and criticisms in order to continue improving every year. 

 

The team was promoted to the premier category at Preston DERT in 2005 and we are very proud to have remained there ever since. We were placed in the top 5 in the premier for 5 years until, at DERT in Sheffield in 2018, we came first in the premier category, the Tyzack (for most exciting team) and the Steve Marris (best team overall) as well as the Veterans competition (our team had a combined age of 260!). We also came second in the music and character categories which we were equally proud of. In 2019 we won the Tyzack again, this time tying with Black Swan Rapper. 

We continue to enter the traditional competition; we began this with our version of ‘Winlaton’ as researched by the team and guided by Phil Heaton and more recently we have entered ‘Murton’ after huge amounts of investigation into the village tradition.  We will continue to enter DERT for many years to come in order to continue improving in our dancing but also to keep up the links we have with the many wonderful teams who enter each year. 

 

The competition was cancelled in 2020 and 2021 due to the COVID-19 pandemic.