Gennaro Magri's Contraddanze (1779)
(Carol Marsh)

This workshop will explore the contraddanze (country dances) composed by Gennaro Magri for the court of King Ferdinand IV of Naples and published as an appendix to his 1779 treatise, Trattato teorico-prattico di ballo. The 39 choreographies present an astonishing array of figures and formations, and Magri's seemingly limitless imagination offers us a wonderful smorgasbord of ways to move bodies through space in symmetrical patterns.
Magri bases 36 of his choreographies on the principle of longways progression found in English country dances. But he does not limit himself to the usual two-couple exchange found in the English model: instead he offers eight different starting configurations, including dances in which the progression involves three or four couples; and he includes four dances for uneven numbers of men and women, paired as same-sex couples. The final three choreographies are set dances for eight, 12, and 32 dancers respectively; the first of these is modeled on the contredanse française, the only one of its kind in the collection.
The most challenging problem in reconstructing these dances is determining how the figures fit the musical phrases; Magri offers very little guidance on this point, and there is often more than one possibility for performance. As part of the workshop I will present the methodology that has guided my decisions.
Magri is also frustratingly vague regarding the steps to be used in his contraddanze—other than the ubiquitous (and somewhat mysterious) balletto fermo, which occurs several times in many of the dances. In the workshop we will explore some possible options to be used with the various musical meters of the dance melodies. 

Carol G. Marsh, Washington DC, USA:

Carol G. Marsh is Professor Emerita at the UNCG School of Music, where she taught music history and viola da gamba and was director of the Collegium Musicum. She has been on the faculty at a number of early music workshops in North America and Europe, teaching both viol, historical dance and Renaissance notation. An internationally recognized authority on Baroque dance and dance notation, she has published extensively in this field and has lectured and given dance workshops at numerous universities in the US and abroad.