<html><head><style type="text/css"><!-- DIV {margin:0px;} --></style></head><body><div style="font-family:times new roman,new york,times,serif;font-size:14pt"><div>Like Star said, I think this will push us unto having an additional track for performance, and that's not a bad thing. You know the material better than I do- teach on!<br> Gaston<br></div><div style="font-family: times new roman,new york,times,serif; font-size: 14pt;"><br><div style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;"><font face="Tahoma" size="2"><hr size="1"><b><span style="font-weight: bold;">From:</span></b> Charlene Charette <charlene281@gmail.com><br><b><span style="font-weight: bold;">To:</span></b> Barony of Bryn Gwlad European Dance list <bg-dance@lists.ansteorra.org><br><b><span style="font-weight: bold;">Sent:</span></b> Thu, March 31, 2011 10:17:58 PM<br><b><span style="font-weight: bold;">Subject:</span></b> Re: [Bg-dance] King's
College<br></font><br>
On Thu, Mar 31, 2011 at 1:33 PM, Zach Most <<a ymailto="mailto:clermont1348@yahoo.com" href="mailto:clermont1348@yahoo.com">clermont1348@yahoo.com</a>> wrote:<br>> Perronnelle,<br>> It's a lot to teach and to absorb in one event, and it would take up a<br>> substantial chunk of the schedule. That said, it's great stuff, and I would<br>> love to see more 15th century dances. Could the dance steps be taught as<br>> part of one of the other classes? Could you cover the steps and both dances<br>> in two hours?<br>> Gaston<br><br>Choreography is easier to learn once you can do the steps without<br>thinking. The steps don't need to be done perfectly or with full<br>ornamentation, but there needs to be little to no hesitation ("Oh my<br>gosh, I don't remember how to do a piva! Oops, too late").<br><br>Fifteenth-century Italian dances (with a few exceptions) take an hour<br>to teach if the students
already have some familiarity with the steps;<br>if the steps are taught in the same class, the class needs to be at<br>least 90 mins. Whether it's two classes of "steps and choreography" or<br>three separate classes, it's still the same amount of material; it's<br>just a matter of how fast the students are asked to learn. [Note:<br>sixteenth-century Italian is a whole 'nother animal.]<br><br>I never could learn Italian dances as taught in the SCA (steps and<br>choreography all jumbled together), so I started going to early music<br>conferences (Amherst, Urbino). The main courses are often four hours<br>in the morning (afternoons are reserved for 2-3 shorter classes such<br>as music or reconstruction). Basic steps are taught (you might spend<br>30 minutes on one step) and are built up into sequences. The sequences<br>are then built up into choreography and, depending on the dances'<br>complexity, you might learn five dances in 10 days (40 hours). This
is<br>MUCH more intense than most casual SCA dancers are going to want, nor<br>do I advocate such a rigorous course. I do, however, think we should<br>allow students time become comfortable with the steps.<br><br>On the third hand, this is King's College and not a dance symposium. I<br>don't want to take away schedule time from other teachers, which is<br>why I was asking. I could do one 90-minute class (one dance with both<br>steps and choreography) or two one-hour classes (one dance; one hour<br>for steps and one for choreography). If the event is set up for<br>one-hour classes, then a 90-minute might be a bad idea. It'll mess up<br>students' ability to take other classes because the classes will<br>overlap. Another option is to teach both dances as one-hour-each class<br>with the prerequisite that the students already know the steps. I've<br>been out of the dance loop for a while so I'm not sure what level<br>students I could reasonably
expect.<br><br>Opinions?<br><br><br>--Perronnelle<br><br><br>-- <br>Educate the children and it won't be necessary to punish the men. --<br>Pythagoras (6th century BCE)<br>_______________________________________________<br>Bg-dance mailing list<br><a ymailto="mailto:Bg-dance@lists.ansteorra.org" href="mailto:Bg-dance@lists.ansteorra.org">Bg-dance@lists.ansteorra.org</a><br><span><a target="_blank" href="http://lists.ansteorra.org/listinfo.cgi/bg-dance-ansteorra.org">http://lists.ansteorra.org/listinfo.cgi/bg-dance-ansteorra.org</a></span><br></div></div>
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