Class: Basic Meyer Rapier
Warm up: Footwork and cutting drills
Cutting drill 1: Oberhau B-F followed by Oberhau H-D, each following smoothly from the other with appropriate stepping.
Cutting drill 2: Oberhau B-F then Unterhau F-B (ending in Ochs on right), transition to Oberhut on left by thrusting, dropping the tip and letting it fall down to the left side and up for the stroke, Oberhau H-D, Unterhau D-H etc. Smoothly join cuts together with appropriate stepping.
A few branles to warm up, then, since we were five with Amalie in town, we decided to return to the only renaissance dance for five that I know of : Verceppe.
Verceppe is a moderately complicated 15th C Italian ballo. It's made harder because the music we use (on Forse che Si Forse che Non) is beautiful, but not always easy to hear the rhythms in, and this dance has a lot of rhythmic changes. We danced Verceppe quite a lot at one point, but none of us remembered it well, so it took most of the hour to refresh.
Lesson plan: Starting to increase the repertoire by adding another defence and a couple of attacks of second intent.
Warm-up: Footwork, Oberhau swapping from lines B to G.
Meyer's Flying (Fliegender) Thrust drill: Start in Low guard, narrow stance
for the lunge, lunge three times into Langort, each time recovering with the front foot only (back foot is planted for whole drill). Repeat, with lunge in first (as in
Meyer's picture).
On Thursday the 26th of May was held a small formal ball in honour of the birthdays of Master William de Cameron and Mistress Katherina Weyssin. The dancers were the aforementioned Mistress Katherina and Master William, and Lady Caterine de Vantier, Lord Ludwig von Regensburg, Lady Anna de Wilde, and Lady Eleanor Hall.*
Lord Ludwig was our herald for the evening, and Mistress Katherina was maestra da ballo.
All the dancers were beautifully attired, in silks and velvets,** with jewels of inestimable worth,*** as befit their station and the joyful occasion.
Had a great crowd tonight as Jon brought his brother, David, along and Amy and Lorna brought along a friend of theirs, Emma.
After some footwork practice to get warmed up, we did some cutting drills.
1: Defence strokes from Oberhut to Alber, changing off between B-F line and the H-D line. Start by cutting from Oberhut to Langort with a step, then following through to Alber; gather for the next step while lifting the sword to Oberhut on the other side for the next cut. The final aim is to string these cuts together in a fluid motion with correct stepping.
Open Dance (Anna teaching)
Advanced Dance (Katherina teaching)
It was a small gathering this week.
Lord Sebastian has recently joined us from Thamesreach and although his gear is still in transit from far off places he came long and was introduced to Meyer's rapier style.
Footwork and basic positions were covered and we ran through the basic basic attacks and defences, though high, low and medium variations of each and then went through an exercise that Eleanor and William had been reviewing the previous week.
Ildhafn Council Meeting Minutes April & May 2011
In Attendance: Angela Wells (Seneschal), Shannon Wanty (A&S), David Robb (Chronicler), Patrick Bowman (Herald), Nicola Haliday (Marshal)
Via Skype: Roger Win & Liz (Baron & Baroness)
A quiet and slightly truncated dance practice this week. No begginers, so we went over Il Conto del Orco and (?) Chiara Stella. Much discussion of whether the trangi in Il Conto are better done forwards or backwards - we settled on forwards.
That done, we quickly revised all the mutanze from Pavaniglia (no surprise that the 4th and 5th consistently give us the most trouble), then danced it a few times all the way through. It's still pretty good, given that we've not danced it since Faire in February.
