[Bg-dance] Italian ren in Austin

Charlene Charette charlene281 at gmail.com
Tue Dec 13 01:24:44 PST 2011


> Is noon to 5 PM a decent time frame, not too long, not too short?
> Personally, I tend to be a hopelessly greedy little consumer ...

It depends on the students and what they want to learn. If you go too
long it can start to ooze out the ears. :-)


> "Two?", he asked faintly.  "I'm sorry, did you just offer two days?"

If I'm going to drive six hours round trip, I might as well make a
weekend of it. This is assuming students want two days of classes and
you have a site. If you want to do two days, I could split 15th & 16th
centuries. That way dancers could come one day and/or the other as
schedules and interest allow. Just throwing ideas out; I'm flexible.


> - Petit Vriens: a lot of people know this and it's reasonably popular

This one seems to be fairly popular everywhere because it's energetic
and fairly easy. It's sort of a gateway Italian dance -- "see, Italian
can be FUN!"


> - Amoroso: a fair number of people know it pretty well, but at the 3-D
>  revel only two couples got up for it.  (BTW: BG now dances it so
>  that a dancer need not return to the same partner they danced away
>  from.  That seems more authentic to Italian Renaissance mores.  It
>  certainly seems more fun.)

I think this is one of the standards for 15th C in the SCA. Doesn't
take too long to teach. I'm curious for your evidence of partner
switching being authentic to the Italian Renaissance.


> - Gelosia: some people know it, but we rarely dance it.

While I've danced this one, I've not really learned it. This is one of
the earliest 15th C reconstructions done (both in and out of the SCA)
so there tends to be many variations around.


> - Rostiboli Gioioso: My impression is that, when it comes to Italian
>  Ren in the SCA, Rostiboli Gioiosa is #4 on the hit parade, but I
>  invite correction.  I've taught it two times now in BG (with the
>  stylings that Vashti hard-coded into my brain decades ago), but I've
>  haven't heard clamoring for it.

This used to be one of the top two 15th C dances in the SCA, but may
have fallen. I've taken 15th C style classes both in and out of the
SCA and they all assumed the students already knew Rostiboli Gioioso
and used that for demonstrating.


> I taught (a version of?) Ballo del Fiore a couple of times a few
> months ago, but that didn't really go anywhere.

I think this one doesn't fit our modern aesthetics very well. We want
everyone up and dancing at the same time. That's also why we do modern
progression in ECD instead of the more authentic variations.


> I have decaying memories of Bella Gioiosa.  And also of that other
> dance, mildly common, that I keep getting dragged into without much
> instruction ... Gracca Amorosa, that's it.

The previous dances you mentioned were 15th C; these two are 16th. I
like Bella Gioiosa. I don't recall if I've done Gracca Amorosa.
Whatever we decide, I'll need to brush up as I've not done much with
Italian dance while I was building the house (I missed going to Urbino
<sniff>.)


I think the first order of business is to pick a date(s) and site.
Then we can see who is interested in coming and what they are
interested in learning. They may not know specific dances, but can
have an opinion on complexity, speed, number of dancers to a set, etc.


--Perronnelle


-- 
Poetry aims to express by means of language precisely that which
language is powerless to express.  -- Paul Valéry (1871-1945)


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