Where dances come from (was: pennsicdance: Separate Balls)

[Alexander B. Clark]

At 01:03 PM 9/19/2002 -0400, Matthew Underhill wrote:
>Also, I've noticed that almost all dancing is 1300's-1600's, is there much
>(if anything) documented that we do from before then?

While this has been answered once, it could stand to be explained a little
more.

In the middle of the 15th Century, aristocratic Italians were learning newly
choreographed dances by Domenico da Piacenza and others of his
school, as well as a few dances said to have been French. Some of the
dancing-masters took to writing down little manuscript books about how to
do these new dances. The apparent reason for writing them down was that
people didn't already know how to do them.

By the third quarter of the same century, the French were learning lots of
basse-danse choreographies, and were apparently having difficulty
remembering all the sequences. A few little books were written for use as
learning aids, and around the beginning of the 16th Century an Englishman
(apparently working from several of these books) published a printed book to
help the English to learn the French basses danses.

Around the same time, someone in England took down some notes on how
to do a few English dances, but did not define terms and was apparently
writing cheat-sheets for his own use. This is called the Gresley MS.

The first wave of larger printed books on dancing came in the late 16th
Century. Caroso and Negri, dancing-masters and choreographers, wrote
books on the new style of Italian dancing. Negri's book was published very
early in the 17th Century, but is considered practically period because it
seems to contain a compilation of dances already known, and is in a style
similar to that previously described by Caroso. Meanwhile, Jehan Tabourot,
canon of Langres wrote a pseudonymous book (as Thoinot Arbeau) named
Orchesographie. This contained the first detailed system of dance notation
to be written together with the music.

Meanwhile, in England, a half dozen people wrote manuscript notes on how
to do dances, mainly the Old Measures, the first in about 1570 and the last
about a century later. These dances were similar to both the English country
dances and the contemporary French dances in Orchesographie.

In 1650, John Playford compiled instructions for over 100 English country
dances and published them as The English Dancing Master. This is the
first large collection of dances written in English. It soon went into new
editions, which for a long time were issued about twice a decade. This book
is the original source for many of the dances done by modern English
country dancers, though some were reshaped in the early 20th century by
Cecil Sharp (including some done in the SCA, such as Sellengers Round).
The most recent Playford dances accepted by many as almost-period are
Black Nag and Sellengers Round (as adapted by Sharp), both from the 3rd
edition (1557). The former is very similar to a first-edition dance, while 
music
and references to the latter go back to the late 16th Century.

The SCA does various dances derived from modern folk traditions, and a few
very heavily modified period dances (though opinions differ on how modern
these versions are and which ones are modified).

That pretty well covers the main sources of dances done at Pennsic, as well
as elsewhere in the SCA. So in terms of the dances that we have a chance
to learn, 15th Century is very early period, while 16th Century includes a lot
of stuff documented in the last two decades. There are pictures from other
periods and regions, but those don't tell us how to do the dances. For many
countries, modern folk tradition is the earliest kind of dancing to have any
documentation of technique.

Alex Clark/Henry of Maldon