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A good, full evening (even though my knees were complaining, so I taught from the couch).
Present: Caterine, Katherine, Anna, Ludwig, William, Katherina
The first class of 2012 went well, with good attendance and lots of dancing in spite of the sticky weather.
Present: Katherina, Anna, William de Cameron, William de Wyke, Caterine, Katherine and Amalie
First hour, simpler dances:
We made a playlist of all the dances on the Canterbury Fair ball list, put in on random, danced everything as is came up, and practiced more intensely those that we had trouble with.
Revision for the Canterbury Faire ball, mostly. We danced:
Present: Katherina, William, Anna, Caterine
Katherina, William, Amalie, Caterine and Nadia continued to work their way through learning or revising the Canterbury Fair ball-list.
Tonight we looked at:
As we had the pleasure of Monna Fina's company for an afternoon, we had an extra dance practice this week.
Present: Fina, Anna, Caterine, William, Katherina
Dances: Lorrayne Almain, Black Almain, Contentezza d'Amore (from Il Ballarino), Gracca Amorosa.
Present: William, Katherina, Anna, Caterine
Finally put all four verses of Spagnoletta Nuova in modo di Madriglia together. More revision of Lioncello, Contrapasso Nuovo.
Present: Anna, Caterine, William, Katherina
Learned the third verse of Spagnoletta Nuova in modo di Madgriglia. Brought Contrapasso Nuovo out of mothballs (doing it with a missing couple). Brushed up Leoncello Vecchio. Played with Amoroso, and the random playlist.
Spagnoletta works to Ramstein, far better than you'd think.
Katherina, William and Caterine had a full, strenuous but fairly casual evening.
After warming up (Spero, some others I now forget) we spent the first half of the practice revising the first half of Spagnoletta Nuova in modo di Madriglia.
The rest of the evening was improvisatory:
Present: Katherina,William, Nadia, Caterine
William, Caterine, Nadia and Katherina woke up our legs with Anello and Amoroso (including the new ending for Amoroso), before launching into an evening of Spagnolette. The first two are old favourites, the last is new to us.
On Saturday the 13th of August Catherine, William and Katherina performed at the Winter Warm-up, an annual dancing event run by the Ruritanian Society and the Danish Club.
We danced Spagnoletta Nuova for three, then William and Katherina danced Pavaniglia. The performance went well, and both dancing and costumes got many appreciative comments.
Having rehearsed last week for our performance at the Auckland Museum Demo, this week we were working on our upcoming performance at the Winter Warmup - the annual dancing extravaganza of the Ruritanian Society, on the 13th of August.
Our current plan, pending a successful dress rehearsal next week, is to perform Pavaniglia and Spagnoletta Nuova. If you'd like to come and watch us, please do! (Contact Katherina for details).
We danced:
Anna ran the first hour of dancing, as usual, for herself, Caterine, William and Sergei.
[She can fill in this section - I had to miss it]
In the second hour, Anna and William rehearsed Cesarina, before we danced Pungente Dardo, Ginevra and Spagnoletta Nuova.
Finally, we relaxed with Amoroso, but with an extra twist: having re-read the two sources I've altered the ending slightly. The dance is now:
1. The couple dance 8 pive together
We (Katherina, Anna, Caterine and William) were all a little under the weather this week, so we took it fairly easy.
We warmed up with Anello and Rostiboli Gioioso.
Then Fulgente Stella, one of Caroso's many cascarde. Fulgente Stella is unusual for two reasons:
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.
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.
Open Dance (Anna teaching)
Advanced Dance (Katherina teaching)
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.
We only had time for a little dancing at the Royal Visit (30th April, 2011), but we made the most of what we had.
After the Royal Court in the afternoon, while our new Baron and Baroness accustomed themselves to their role and regalia, and before the feast, we took the opportunity to use the space in the feasting hall for the purpose for which it was surely created!
First, Mistress Katherina Weyssin and Master William de Cameron danced Pungente Dardo, a delightful balletto recorded by Maestro Caroso in Il Ballarino (published in Venice in 1580).
