Dance Post 1

After the lovely wedding of gkacsns and giddysinger, there was a fairly exuberant reception with traditional music by Tinsmith, Morris dancing, and some very kickass cake. During one of the Tinsmith instrumentals, I grabbed a couple of little boys by the hands to dance. We skipped around in a line, and some folks joined us, and one of the boys (6 years old!) spontaneously decided to turn and turn until he'd made the line a circle (dancers facing out, no less).

It was exhausting but an awful lot of fun. So it makes me wonder how much fun it might be to "choreograph" some simple dances to early medieval music. I'm putting "choreograph" in quotes because I don't think the dancing I have in mind really deserves that designation. I'm imagining "dancers in a line," a basic follow-the-leader dance like a conga line (or that English country one where you've got lines of four, and the chorus has each person clapping and hopping in a circle), and "dancers in a circle," where you mostly go left or right but some proto-bransle figures could be used, too.

I do love "real" late-period (or post-period) SCA dancing, but there's something to be said for simple exuberance.

Dance Post 2: Maypole v2.0

There's a demo on May 9 (at the National Zoo! Y'all come!) and I thought, "Gee, I could do a maypole." And indeed, the organizer would like a maypole, so I need to talk to him. Only catch: It's the "Guppie Gala," for ages 3-12, so the flirty adolescent maypole I had in mind is, um, not suitable.

A simplified and shortened version:

Decorate the maypole. No ribbon dancing - it takes too long to untangle if we want to have more than one dance per demo.

Assemble the kids for two dances: modified Bransle Official and Maltese Bransle.

Bransle Official:
[two singles left, two singles right] (repeat); [six singles left, drop hands and turn in place] (repeat)
Chorus: "Fa la la la la la la, La ... la-la, now is the month of Maying."

Maltese Bransle:
[two singles left, two singles right] (repeat); [three singles in, three claps] [three singles out, three claps]
Chorus: "Oh, in comes the spring, Oh the joys it brings, And the boys all dance, And the girls all sing" (repeat)

(Vague notion that the repeat should be "girls all dance and the boys all sing" for gender equity purposes, but then the younger kids will muddle it.)

No couples or partners are needed; the same L-R-L-R figure is the same in both. If I can write verses for the two songs, they can be sung by a single all-purpose dance instructor/music maker (good that demo can happen with minimal people), but if there are more people to provide music that certainly would add to it. I'd guess 15-20 min to dance both.

Quote of the Day

"Center the nameplate horizontally on the right side between 1 and 2 inches above the top button. Adjust placement of the nameplate to conform to individual figure differences."

- US Army Class A uniform for women. I wonder if the "adjust" part was as a result of foresight or an unfortunate alignment of uniform regs and, uh, "individual figure differences."