The Letter of Dance -- Introduction

This page, and the ones under it, are the electronic version of The Letter of Dance. The Letter, in turn, is a more-or-less regular newsletter, printing articles, reconstructions, and letters relating to SCA and/or Renaissance dance. As of this writing, it has a couple dozen contributors, and several hundred readers, from all of the Laurel Kingdoms of the SCA.

(If you've stumbled across this page, and have no idea what the SCA is, suffice it to say that it stands for the Society for Creative Anachronism, which is a world-wide club dedicated to researching and reconstructing the culture of the Middle Ages and Renaissance. Some of the articles in this book are specifically about the practice of dance in the Society; the rest of the articles are primarily about Renaissance dance in general.)

The Letter came about to fill three needs:

To provide a place for dance researchers to exchange findings and research;
To provide new dances and reconstructions to those actively doing Renaissance dance;
To provide a forum for discussion of dance in the Renaissance and SCA.

These three needs are filled by the three broad categories of contributions to the Letter: articles about dance and dance research; reconstructions and inventions of dances; and a letters page open to pretty much any and all subjects related to period dance. Most of the newsletter articles in all of these categories have been reprinted in this collection; the only articles omitted are the editorials, and other articles or letters which were particularly time-dependent, and are now obsolete.

There are tapes that accompany this collection, called The Tapes of Dance. The Tapes include performances of all of the dances reconstructed or invented in the Letter, with multiple versions of many of the dances. These tapes are not public domain, but are close: the tapes may be copied for non-profit purposes, provided that you also make a copy of the insert that comes with each tape, and keep the two together. All music on the tapes was contributed by SCA performers. These tapes are now actually CDs, and are available from Eric Praetzel.

For More Information

Click here for the price list and basic ordering information for the Letter.

The Letter was founded by Justin du Coeur (Mark Waks), who produced the first 17 issues, Tape 1, and Book 1. In the summer of 1995 he turned it over to new editors: Dani of the Seven Wells (Dani Zweig) and Ellisif Flakkari (Monica Cellio). In September 1998, the editor's hat passed to William Redcape of Iron Mountain (Bill Street). In the spring of 2002, the editor's hat passed to Katherine Mercer (Catherine Dean, catherinedean@gmail.com.)

Return to the Letter of Dance.

Webbed by Gregory Blount of Isenfir (Greg Lindahl)