"Von Unterschiedlichen Täntzen" -The Diary of Georg Schroeder and the Tradition of Dance Culture in Gdansk in the Second Half of the 17th Century
(Alexandra Kajdanska)
In the Municipal Library of the Polish Academy of Science in Gdansk is a very interesting manuscript: Ms. 673. It is a diary of a Gdansk councillor by the name of Georg Schroeder (1635 – 1703). He was a true renaissance man. In this diary he wrote about different dances which he saw and probably danced. Gdansk was a famous city, known for its dance culture – especially for its luxurious balls, festivities and events – like big festivities for Polish kings and queens with performances of elaborated moresques by the guilds of furriers, sailors and others. In my research I would like to present fragments from this manuscript diary concerning his section Von Unterschiedlichen Täntzen. Theauthor describes 5 dances belonging to different styles and one of them, which was called anglezy in Polish, seems to be of the English style, the others belonging to Italian and German styles. For a better understanding the author illustrates these dances with schematic drawings of the choreographies, which were very popular among the wealthy patricians as well as the lower classes in Gdansk.
Alexandra Kajdanska, Gdansk, Poland:
Alexandra Kajdanska is a theatrologist, dance teacher and costume designer. She studied at the Dance Academy in Peking and at the University of National Minorities in Peking at the faculties of ballet and traditional Chinese dances. She also teaches historical dance in Early Music School Scholares Minores pro Musica Antiqua in Poniatowa near Lublin. In 2008, she published an article on ‘Fashionable Life in Eighteenth-Century Gdansk: The Drawings of Daniel Chodowiecki (1721-1801)’.
