Orchesography

When I joined the SCA in 1969, this book was the most easily available source for doing renaissance dances, so the dances from this book such as the pease bransle and the horses bransle, were regularly danced at SCA events. I was never a great dance master,but I learned them well enough to enjoy doing them. Later other sources for earlier and more sophisticated Italian dances became popular,but I never did them enough to be comfortable with them. This book itself is a treatise in the form of a dialogue between the dance master Arbeau and his pupil Capriol; it begins by justifying dancing by the customs of the ancient Greeks, and goes on the describe popular dances at the French court in the late 16th century. It was first printed in show more 1589, but purports to be based on an earlier manuscript. This text includes an introduction and notes by Julia Sutton, some simple music (as printed in the original text), and modern labanotation for the dances. My impression is that more recent scholarship on renaissance dance has gone well beyond this, but I still remember it fondly. The dances were cheerful, vigorous, and when done with the right partner, surprisingly sexy. show less

Translation of the 1589 publication with lots of music too