Collegium 2007

 

Collegium Weekend

 

I overdid it.  I overextended myself… again.  I’m not complaining.  It is my own fault. 

 

Going into this Collegium, I had originally planned on teaching a class – maybe even two.  Yet, over the evolution of time, I found myself with another case of helium-hand teaching three classes.  Add on a fly-in guest from Calontir.  Add on playing host to some friends from Calafia.  Add on coordinating dinner plans with another friend coming up from Encinidas.  Add on trying to coordinate with my hubby who was tied up with other things. 

 

Calgon!!!!!!!!  Take me away!!!!!!!

 

Collegium is such a fun and fascinating collage of activity.  In a way, I envy the newbie who walks in to find so many interesting things right there at his or her fingertips.  Archery, fighting, hands-on classes, cooking, embroidery, calligraphy & illumination, dance, craftsy stuff, theory classes, lecture classes, etc., etc.  It can be very intimidating, overwhelming, and just in general – wonderful!  I had the pleasure of taking a couple of classes – a luxury that I don’t usually have.  Regretfully, I had to skip the scriptorium this go around.  That part sucks, as I really like to support the C&I production in the kingdom.  But something had to give, and this time around, that was it. 

 

One of the highlights of my weekend involved a dance-geek moment where I had an accidental breakthrough.  This particular class focused in on the Gresley dances.  To give a bit of background, the Gresley collection is an assembly of dances only recently discovered in the late 80’s.  The first publication of the Gresley dances came around in 1996.  And what exactly ARE the Grelsey dances?  They are a collection of dances that most likely date to approximately 1500 England, which makes them the single oldest collection of actual “English” dances that we have.  May not sound like much, but for us dance geeks, it is incredible to think that we could very well be dancing dances that Henry VII danced.  Anyway, while teaching one particular dance, one of my students commented in a rather joking manner how the dance seemed rather German to him.  We all laughed.  What he was actually referring to was the tempo of the dance, and the rather militant beat, made all the more prominent by the loud stomping of his boots.  Yet, when the class was over, that comment stuck in my brain.  “Wait a minute,” I though.  “That dance is kinda like… kinda like… Kinda like an Almain!”  Bearing some very similar patterns to other known dances of the Inns of Court (dances from Henry VIII’s time), my student had inadvertently stumbled on to something.  It really DID resemble German dances!  Howy CWAP!  I’m on to something!  I see the potential for an article here!  Now to just find the time…