In one form or another, everyone is inspired by some form of muse. Whether it be the complexity of pulling out the oil paints and easels to capture the serene portrait of a family of ducks on an autumn leaf-framed tranquil lake, or something as naively innocent as refrigerator art, everyone enjoys some form of aesthetic expression. A.D.D.-boy that I am, I tend to enjoy lots of things all at the same time. This is where the SCA works for me – it provides a backdrop for me to be a total art-geek. Yet, of the arts that I enjoy, the most consistent and most familiar to me over the years has been dance.
It has been about fifteen years since I first took up the gauntlet of teaching dance in the SCA. Back at that time, I did so for one reason and one reason alone – nobody else was doing it. The regular instructors had all moved away, which meant either I would have to do it, or it wouldn’t happen.. By heart, I knew of all four dances – NONE of which were actually pre-1600 dances. At the time, I really was ill-qualified, but I wanted to give it a try. Slowly but surely, I tracked down whatever tapes I could that had music that was kinda-sorta-in-a-way workable. The frustration mounted early on. Back then, the internet was not quite what it is now, and finding sources for choreographies and music was a huge challenge.
Over time, other people helped to show me the bits and pieces that I needed to make things work. I found other helpful sources in the most unlikely of places. I felt like the bee’s knees when my friend Jada put me in touch with a company where I could order several 3-minute demo tapes so that I could dub various dances onto shorter tapes and avoid fast-forward/rewind. My, how tek-naw-lo-gee has changed things!
My old Kingdom had a large number of people who loved to show up after feast and just dance for the heck of it. I could be teaching them completely wrong, but they didn’t’ care - it was all about the fun. Sometimes, I DID teach them incorrectly. We all do. I’d like to think that over time I fixed my own mistakes. But who knows? Sometimes, old bad habits die hard.
After several years, dance was back to being a very regular and strong activity in Trimaris. But one thing was certain – I was getting’ fried. Anyone who views teaching dance as a pure “Artform” obviously hasn’t done it. It is work, and hard work at that. For the span of probably at least ten years, I taught dance at literally every single event I attended. On more than one occasion, I would show up at the event site to have the people at gate say, “Oh good… there will be dance” upon seeing me. While I appreciated their confidence, it would have been nice to have been ASKED for a change instead of having it simply be “expected.” It was not my “job.” Nobody was paying me. A simple “please” and/or “thank you” would have been nice.
Over the years, the crispiness continued. How many times can one teach the Bransle Official before just becoming sick to death of it? I have to wonder – how long did the dance stay “popular” when it was new? Did it stick around as long as the amount of time I had been teaching it? I tend to doubt it.
Few things are sadder than to fall out of love with an artform that one had previously loved, but that was what was happening. More often than not, I would try to encourage others to teach. I loved to perform certain dances, but had just gotten tired of the same thing over and over, while feeling that it was taken for granted. Right before I moved to California, I remember being called upon for my biggest dance challenge ever – to prepare the Kingdom for a Caroso Ball. While I appreciated the patronage of the Queen to encourage activity in this artform, the amount of work involved was severe. The biggest challenge was to work up a repertoire of several different period styles of dance, and teach them enough times repeatedly in preparation for the event that people could perform them without me calling out the instructions. Sound easy? NOT! This took months of preparation, working with the musicians, and teaching, teaching, teaching in every spare moment that I had. Even with the help of my buds up in Oldenfeld, it was still a tremendous amount of work.
When the event came about, I spent the day teaching. Now, to add insult to injury, I was sick – really, really sick. Take my advice – NEVER take on a task like this when you have a whopper-doozie combination of a strep/sinus infection and dysentery combined with a UTI. Sound fun?! I really should have ended up in the hospital. The only reason I didn’t was because I just couldn’t afford to take time off from work.
When the event ended, the ball was a success, the Queen thanked me, and I wanted to crawl into a cave and die. Now that I think back, I think I did. I spent the next day in bed.
Fast forwarding to the present, I haven’t done anywhere near as much with dance as I had previously. I have taught when called upon out of a feeling of duty, but that has been it. That is, until this past Collegium. Setting a challenge to myself, I decided to teach a class on the Gresley dances – a fairly recent discovery that I had jumped on when it first came out, and then put aside. The vibrancy of the dances renewed my energy. The simplistic beauty of the figures brings to light why I got into dance in the first place – it transcends the barriers of time to connect us with our ancestors through one thing and one thing alone – fun. The manuscript provides a proverbial Rosetta Stone in terms of dance theory and research. Some of the dances very clearly are the forerunners of Playford (the beginning of English Country dance as we know it, which led to modern contra dance and square dance). Other dances are not simply tributes to Italian bassadanza, but ARE bassadanzi. And then there are others that are just down n’ out freaky in their unique quirky fun.
It feels good to once again have developed a love for dance. I was afraid that it had become pure “job” and less “fun.”
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