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Our first advanced-dancing session for the summer!

Present: Katherina, Anna, William, Caterine

Warm up: Pungente Dardo, Amoroso

Main Session: Canario

Revision

Regular dance classes have finished for the year, and will re-start in February, but we're still dancing!

Elisabeth cut out a new 16th century kirtle from blue linen, and adjusted the back of her Dorothea Sabina dress.

Maria decided to make some cushions with tassles on the corners, so Caterine taught everyone how to make tassles. She also decided to make a new 15th century dress with big sleeves out of green linen.

Eleanor brought her gambesin to refit through the back, but then made the happy discovery that it didn't need any adjusting, so did some flat felling for Maria.

Council Meeting Sunday 5^th December 2010

(late substitute for "November" meeting, to allow St Caths steward a week to prepare report)

Present: Katherine Davies (Seneschal), Angela Wells (Chatelaine), Vanessa Atkins (Reeve), David Robb (Chronicler), Patrick Bowman (Herald & Harbourmaster), Phil Mason (Constable), Shannon Wanty (A&S), Al Muckart

Apologies: Matt and Bea

Our last class of 2010, and we have a lovely session, with both familiar faces and some new ones. Please come back next year!

We got through:

• Cassandra
• Pinagay
• Charlotte

(all 16th century French branles, from the manual "Orchesography")

• Amoroso
• Rostiboli Gioioso
• Petit Riens

(all balli from 15th century Italian manuscripts)

• La Volta

(a variation on the galliard, in which the woman leaps, and the man spins her, while helping her to leap even higher)

Still Meyer rapier, of course:

2.77r: / Forgeng p197:"How you shall change through and thrust to the other side against an opponent who strikes out your first thrust"

2.77v: "How you shall pull back the thrust as if you intended to thrust in elsewhere, and just as he will parry it, thrust back in where you had first threatened the thrust"

[skipped  "how you shall counterthrust at the same time as he cuts"]

2.78r / Forgeng p198: "How you shall catch your opponent's cuts and thrusts, and countercut"

On the Sunday of Saint Catherine's, we had a picnic in Cornwall Park, and a tournament to select our new Baronial Fencing Champion. Eleanor Hall arranged the tournament, with assistance from Don William de Cameron, last year's champion.

We had five combatants:

• His Excellency Don Emrys Twdr, our Baron
• Don William de Cameron, defending champion
• Sir Willehelm von Tanneberg
• Baron Benedict of Askerigg
• Lord Ludwig von Regensburg

I tried a new format for the Ball at St Catherine's this year: dancing by request, requests in strict Order of Precedence. There are some records of renaissance festivities where the guests chose dances in order of rank like this, though they seem to have been even more formal.

We got through a lot:

William and Katherina practiced for a performance of Ginevra, and Caterine taught it to Ludwig. We re-learned Fiamma d'Amore. We tweaked a few details of La Figlia de Guglielmino and Presonera. We ran through Chiara Stella, at high speed, several times in a row. We all practiced out fioretti (and tried out the passage from passamezzo where you circle with fioretti and trabuchetti). And finally, we declared ourselves too tired to make it through La Volta, and retired for dessert.

Revision of the sequence:

• your opponent attacks
• you parry, then thrust
• your opponent parries your thrust
• you take the momentum from the parry, snap into Ox, and thrust on the other side

On both sides, and building it up slowly, as we had some newer people.