April 16th

Advanced class only, once again.

Amoroso

Always a nice warm-up, and with enough different recordings to keep us on our toes. 

Dance game: dancing blind

This time, with only three of us, David had his eyes open in the centre, leading both Katherine and Nadia blind. A much more challenging exercise, especially getting two partners to turn in a confined space. He managed to get us turn turn under each others' arms, without colliding. 

Continued work: Belriguardo 

Solid work on Belriguardo Novo (figured, for 3) tonight.

It has quite a few elements that together make it rather challenging: slow bassadanza sections that must be precise and flowing, varied figures, little repetition, variations from the "standard" Belreguardo, steps danced out of misura, contrapassi, figures where each person does something different, figures with fast turns, unusual figures, a long pattern to memorise with limited musical cues, figures where you can't see other people.

We're getting there: it's memorised now, and is becoming more flowing.

Focus on 15thC Italian technique

• hops in saltarello in bassadanza: time ( hesitate on 5, hop on six), smoothness
• travel in saltarello: these don't need to be very short, if we have space; you can travel (a little) on the hop
• travel in pive - with space, these can be rapid and flowing; three distinct steps with an acceration in the middle, rather than step-close-step
• different ornaments in saltarelli tedesci: hops, taps, double taps/frappamenti (very like a pair of continentie, as in La Figlia for two), ripresette

Dance game: improvisation

15thC Italian bassadanza style, improvising in 1-3 tempo units, taking turns. Without music and with. Some nice stuff coming out: we're losing our fear of "boring" travelling passages (e.g. "2 doppii forwards") and at the same time experimenting with more challenging steps: cambiamenti, contrapassi, movimenti, salti, mezavolte etc.

Continued work: La Figlia fi Guglielimino, for four

Points to work on:

• transition out of bassadanza, including weight change
• men's mezzevolte
• tidy up piva: faster, smoother, cleaner movimenti

"standard" positions so far have been: initial front couple - David and Angela, initial back couple - Patrick/Katherine and Nadia.

So far we have only danced this to the Eschewynge of Ydlenesse recording.

From here, we decided to abandon our current 15thC Italian focus and return to some 16thC material, before finishing off with some simple social dances.

Allegrezza d'Amore

An irregular three-person cascarda from Il Ballarino, which we did quite a lot a year or so ago and since largely forgotten. Good to exercise our 16thC muscles, and find them still strong.

I think our recent focus on the 15thC helped in making this cascarda flowing where sometimes it has been a little jerky. We could all use practice on our seguiti battuti and fioretti a pie pari to return them to our previous level of precision. 

Belfiore

An old favourite, and lovely to revisit. Tried the music from L'arte perfetta, and found it pleasing and very danceable (albeit with a more sedate feel that we're used to).

Petit Riense

Again using the music from L'arte perfetta - very nice. 

For the second time this evening, unprecedented words from Katherine: "take (slightly) larger steps; travel further". As we know the dance well, we played silly games, and there was much giggling.