Today (Sat. Feb. 10) I went to a five hour Baroque dance workshop at the Schola. It was extreme fun for the first 4 ½ hours, but then my brain turned off and my muscles are letting me know they’d had enough.
It seems to me Baroque dance is one step away from ballet, so we have lots of jumping and tip-toeing and turn out and other such things that use muscles you normally don’t. I was so lost at the beginning. The German was fast, and the pace was quick, but I just bobbed along doing my best until I started getting it. Forget adding the arms in. It was all I could do to get to the right spot and maybe even get some footing right. It was an ideal Janet situation, though. Throw me in over my head in language and activity, and I can’t have more fun! It was a little awkward when one lady started translating for me and I couldn’t seem to make the point that it didn’t matter if she told me the dance moves in English – I don’t know what they mean and I don’t know how to dance! My two years of ballet in high school did help tremendously and at the break the teacher said I’d be bored in the Baroque dance for musicians I’d signed up for so I should come to the Wednesday evening class. That’s the one I watched! That would be way over my head, but if she doesn’t mind me in the class, then I know I’ll learn a lot!
For your amusement I’ve taken a picture of part of the minuet we learned. We also did a gavotte. You see the section of music this part of the dance goes with, and you see the notation for the dance. Looks like chicken scratches to me! I did manage to decipher some of it after some English explanation, but still it’s mostly unintelligible. You can see toward the middle-right a half circle on a line. This is where the man starts. The two half circles (the smaller one is her petticoat) is the lady. You can follow their path around the room, and the little lines are the feet and hands somehow. After the curve there’s a straight line, then a right angle to a dotted line with a + then another right angle and line. This dotted line isn’t movement, it’s just so they can fit more information on this page when the pace traces back over itself. For example, the lady goes right I in the line then back to the left along that line. Fascinating. I wonder how they deciphered it. I suppose there are lots of dancing technique books since it was necessary to know how to dance to impress those important people!
Piece of random trivia: In American the key signature is given only at the start of the piece and if they key changes. Sometimes that can get one in trouble. Apparently, it’s just a stupid American thing. Europeans put the key on every line! The time signature, however, is only given once.
