Historical Accuracy: Dance a Branle or an Almaine

In the UK, we're fortunate to have an organisation called the Historical Dance Society.  If you are an actor or opera singer, you might be interested to learn how historical dances were actually performed, so  this is definitely a website to save to your favourites:-


https://historicaldance.org.uk/

 

The Ould Almaine

• Dances from 12th to early 20th century
• Music
• Costume
• Research
• Education
• Promotion

(As a matter of interest, the Society was formerly called the Dolmetsch Historical Dance Society.  Arnold Dolmetsch founded the firm that makes recorders, and the Historical Dance Society was named after his wife Mabel Dolmetsch.  You could say they left quite a cultural legacy!) 

What was dance music like, in 1781 London? Thompson Revisited ...

Book Review: Thompson Revisited (18th century dance tunes)

Karen's eyes lit up when she found this - she's researched the rare Caledonian Muse, a dance book by the Thompson publishing dynasty, and now, here's a book compiling dance music published between 1781-1788.  What could be more intriguing or delightful?  We bought it for the Whittaker Library and it's hitting the shelves any day now.  (Details here.)

The book contains the tunes as they were published 'for violin, German flute and hautboy [oboe]'. The tunes are re-set, not in facsimile, which makes them larger and clearer for performance, and there are ample dance instructions.  There's no accompaniment - just tunes - but a basic understanding of harmony would enable a musician to improvise a bass.  The whole book is edited and rewritten by Boyd Rothenberger, who is on the board of governers of CONTRALAB, an international organization of contra dance leaders.  He teaches 'dances from the American Revolutionary War and War of 1812 periods of history to military re-inactors across the country ...', and found these Thompson books when he was visiting Exeter in Devon.  

There's a useful alphabetical index, and an invaluable glossary of dance terms.

From a researcher's point of view, the transcription of the original title page is not entirely accurate - unless there was perhaps a choice of title pages for different years.  An introduction with bibliographical and contextual information would have been useful.  However, as far as dancers are concerned, here's a great collection of dance tunes as performed at 'Court, Bath, Tunbridge [and] all Public Assemblies' at the end of the eighteenth century.  It's available from Amazon.

Basse Danse II

A RILM blogpost about Basse Danse: 'Basse danse with attitude'.

Jane Austen in the ballroom

Background to dancing in the early nineteenth century can be seen at a website entitled Persuasions On-Line, by dance historian Allison Thompson. There's another interesting website about the 19th century dance, the Quadrille, entitled Ellis Rogers & Quadrille Club. Dance historians please advise Whittaker Live if there are other useful websites that RSAMD dancers and actors ought to know about!