A message from our Dance Master, Philip White:
We’re continuing to make plans for European Dance! And I want to share some of those plans with you!
We’ll have a block of dance in the afternoon, from 2pm-5pm. (We’d hoped for dancing after feast, that’s one of the things people missed, but we unfortunately have some site constraints.)
This means we are also planning for a “teaching ball” because we don’t have to also fit in classes. While not a historical ball, it does let us make dance available to more people. And that’s what we are hoping for. More people! And more fun!
I’m going to try and best to help as many people that want to join us in dancing.
I’ll introduce each of the dances and then give people a quick walk through of the dance. This will not be to teach people the dance for all time. This will be to help people know where to go and when to move while also having fun. You may not have perfect steps but no one will care! Because we are more interested in having you smiling at the end of doing lots of dances instead of having you memorize just one!
Here’s the list of dances we are planning to chose from for Twelfth Night. I took a mix of historical dances and some SCA favorite from slightly post-period.
I’m choosing these to help keep people interested and commutable by doing things they know. But I also want people to see that historical dances can be just as fun and sometimes more so, too.
- Gathering Peasecods
- Belfiore
- Queen’s Alman
- Horse Bransle
- Amoroso
- Sellenger’s Round
- Contrapasso in due
- Maltese Bransle
- Petit Vriens
- Rufty Tufty
- Heart’s Ease
- Rostiboli Gioioso
- Official Bransle
- Black Alman
- Ly Bens Distonys
- Anello
- Pease Bransle
- Black Nag
- Lorayne Alman
- Jenny Pluck Pears
- Washerwoman’s Bransle
- Gelosia
If you’d like to work on these in advance, please do! Some of these dances can be found on YouTube and other services. You can see demonstrations there. Here’s a few handy resources, too, at the SCA Renaissance Dance Homepage.
This has references to historical sources but also sheet sheets and descriptions from modern dancers.
Yay dancing!
~Philip
