Dancing

Historical dancing has a charm all its own, as we have only very few written records. In many countries, there were no dancing masters yet, and musical notation wasn’t standardized at all – until the early 15th century, almost all we have are pictures from which to derive the dances.
Our repertoire thus mostly consists of:

-Dances from the Inns of Court, which were danced in London from ca. 1570 to 1675. The ten “measures” are of different complexity, from the simple Quadran Pavan to the beautiful Black Alman.

-Italian Renaissance dances of the 15th century, mainly from the dance manuals by Domenico, Cornazano and Ebreo. These include the simpler bassa danzas (slow), as well as the more complex balli, which have tempo changes and faster parts; the 16thcentury dances of Negri and Caroso become quite complicated. Some of our favorites are: Belfiore, Gelosia, Marchesana, Petit Vriens.

-Some bransles, popular and easy circle/line dances as described in Orchesographie by Thoinot Arbeau, which was published in 1589 in France. These were quite clearly middleclass dances that, according to contemporary accounts, were also enjoyed by the nobility, although the upper classes also amused themselves with Pavans, the occasional Galliard, or the more demanding Italian dances of the period, which we can also do.

-Basses danses from Burgundy as found in “Les Basses danses de Marguerite d’Autriche” (c. 1490) are rather more unusual for us, with the exception of our signature dance, the Danse de Cleve. But we are working on more of them, because they are beautiful.

-The wide-ranging field of English country dances. Interestingly, “country” does not refer to rural areas but is derived from the Latin “contra”, referring to the dancers standing in lines facing each other – later on, also in groups of four. We don’t dance them often, but when we do, we use Playford’s first edition for those, which was published 1651.

And a very special treasure, some dances from the so-called Gresley Manuscript, a notebook kept between 1480 and 1520 by an Englishman named Johnes Banys of Drakelow. Among other things, it includes eight dance descriptions complete with music, 26 dances without music, and musical notation for 13 others lacking a description. These notes have been interpreted by several period music and dance groups in cooperation with historians. Our favorite is the group GAITA from Scotland (www.gaita.co.uk), who regularly come to Germany for a weekend of teaching and dancing at the SCA Academia della Danza.

See our Event Calendar for upcomming events.