Dancing and Democracy: critical transitions in English theatre dance 1642 – 1660
(Anne Daye)

The English Civil War of 1642 was followed by the Commonwealth or Interregnum, a form of republican government under Oliver Cromwell, until the Restoration of the monarchy in 1660. Subject to a more powerful Parliament, Charles II did not have the same power or finances as his Stuart predecessors, resulting in profound change to theatre arts in Britain.

The court masque had fostered the emergence of a new profession of dance in England which was at a critical point of development when war disrupted lives and closed theatres. This paper will trace evidence for a hybrid form of the court masque combining drama and dance in the 1630s, a prototype of the ballet d’action, performed both in court settings and in the public theatres. This new genre could be organised to conform with the strictures of that regime. The theatrical entrepreneur, William Davenant, with a licence to open London theatres in 1660, was able to mount performances of drama, opera and dance that the royal court could not afford. Theatre dance had to survive in the commercial environment of the public theatres, subject to economies of scale but also freedom to experiment.

The timing of the Civil War was critical, nor only for the British system of government but also for dance. It led to the development of parliamentary democracy but severed dance from state support, unlike most European countries. In fact, state funding for the arts, including dance, did not commence until after the Second World War, following another transition in official attitudes to the arts.

Anne Daye, Bedford, UK

Anne Daye is a teacher, researcher and writer on historical dance, primarily of social and theatre dance of England within the European Renaissance. Her doctoral thesis 2008 broke new ground by discussing the performance and dance of the Jacobean masque. Investigating the vernacular forms of British dances is central to her studies: morris, country dance, reels, jigs, hornpipes. Anne publishes widely, most recently an article on Shakespeare’s use of masque for The Oxford Handbook of Shakespeare and the Dance 2019 and on court dancing for Performances at Court in the Age of Shakespeare for Cambridge University Press 2019. She also reconstructs dances from the original sources, publishing dance instruction books with extensive contextual notes accompanied by recorded music for HDS. Recent ones are Dances of the French Courts: 16^th century Dance, Music and Song from France, A New Collection of Dances for Jane Austen and Dances for Queen Victoria: Music and instructions for country dances, quadrilles, polka, schottische and reels by Joseph Lowe,dancing master to the royal family

Following a career as lecturer in Dance History in HE Dance Departments, Anne continues to research in retirement and is Director of Education and Research for the Historical Dance Society.

Local Traditions, National Controversies: Dance on Trial in a Time of Transition
(Emily Winerock)

Changes in religious doctrine and observance in late sixteenth- and early seventeenth-century England led to an abrupt and contested reconsideration of the acceptability of dancing in various contexts, from church sponsorship of morris dancers to dancing on Sunday to any form of ‘mixt dancing’ of men and women together. The lack of consensus about what constituted a ‘use’ versus an ‘abuse’ led to widespread disagreement over whether long-established dance traditions needed to be altered or eliminated. This presentation examines conflicting views of dance in two court cases: a 1599 fornication case from Great Coxwell, Berkshire and a 1613 Star Chamber case against participants in the annual Whitsun Revel in Rangeworthy, Gloucestershire. In Great Coxwell, a defendant causes an uproar in the court by arguing that skipping church services to go dancing was more reprehensible than having a child out of wedlock. In Rangeworthy, disagreement about the acceptability of the parish’s dance-filled Whitsuntide traditions led to verbal and physical confrontations between the constable and parishioners. These cases illuminate the tensions between those who saw dancing as both a symbol of, and the means for committing, sin and sacrilege, and those who understood dancing as a performance of, and contributor to, neighbourliness and community cohesion.

Emily Winerock, Pittsburgh, PA, USA

Emily Winerock teaches dance history at Point Park University in Pittsburgh, PA. Her research focuses on the practices and politics of dance in 16th- and 17th-century England. She received her B.A. from Princeton University, M.A. from the University of Sussex, and Ph.D. from the University of Toronto. Her publications include essays in Journal of the Northern Renaissance (2025), Shakespeare Jahrbuch (2021), Borrowers and Lenders (2017), and Dance Chronicle (2016), as well as chapters in The Oxford Handbook of Shakespeare and Dance (2019), The Oxford Handbook of Dance and Competition (2018), Playthings in Early Modernity (2017), The Sacralization of Space and Behavior in the Early Modern World (2015), and Worth and Repute: Valuing Gender in Late Medieval and Early Modern Europe (2011). She also serves as co-chair of the Early Dance Working Group of the Dance Studies Association, co-director of the Shakespeare and Dance Project, and copy editor for the journal Dance Chronicle.

Matradur and Manimasque: two names and three dance traditions in the first third of the 19^th century.
(Dmitry Filimonov)

The turn of the 19th century was the time of tectonic shifts that heavily affected the political and cultural landscape of the European countries. It is particularly fascinating to trace the spread of melodies and specific dances that formed distinct traditions of this period.

The dances Matradur (a longway with improvisational part) and Manimasque (a special quadrille) are frequently mentioned in Russian literature of the first third of the 19th century. At the same time, in Scandinavian countries, Thuringia and Britain, we find longways with names such as Money Musk, Molinasky, and Mollimasse. Although the names are similar to Manimasque, the figures of these dances resemble those of Matradour. The music gives even more puzzles as the tunes of Money Musk and Manimasque coincide. The tunes for Matradour also appear in Sweden, while Austrian music sources contain both Madratur and Manimasque.

In the present work we demonstrate that these two names refer to three closely intertwined dance traditions that were spread in the countries of the Baltic Sea and met at Viena Congress.

Dmitry Filomonov, Moscow, Russia

Dmitry Filimonov started his dancing career in 1993 as a dancesport dancer and came to early dances in 2002. Since 2007 he teaches historical dance in “Golden Forests” early dance school (a co-leader of the school). He is the head of the historical dance research seminar in Moscow. Dmitry gave lectures at many international conferences and has seven published articles on early dance topics from 16^th to 19^th.

Dmitry graduated from Moscow State University and holds a Ph.D. in mathematics.

Mit Tanzschritten auf dem Seil zu europaweitem Ruhm: Pierre Forioso und Mme Saqui
(Gerrit Berenike Heiter)

Tanz und Seiltanz stehen während des 17. und 18. Jahrhunderts in einer sehr engen Beziehung. Die Mitglieder der Akrobatik- und Seiltanztruppen treten vor allem anlässlich der verschiedenen Messen in Europa auf. Insbesondere in Paris erfreuen sie sich größter Beliebtheit, u. a. das „Théâtre des Grands danseurs du Roi“. Die Begeisterung für diese Art von Unterhaltung lässt auch nicht durch den revolutionären Regimewechsel nach. Im Gegenteil: Seiltänzer und Akrobaten bleiben ein unverzichtbarer Bestandteil der Pariser Theaterszene. Zu Beginn des 19. Jahrhunderts erreicht das Genre einen, in dieser Form später nie mehr erreichten, Ruhm: die Auftritte der Familie Forioso mit Pierre Forioso (1772–1846) sowie von Madame Saqui (1786–1866), Marguerite-Antoinette Lalanne – die „Tochter des berühmten Navarin, des ersten ‚Sauteurs‘ Ludwigs XVI.“– stehen im Zentrum der Fallstudie. Dabei wird ein besonderer Augenmerk auf die Virtuosität ihres Repertoires an Schritten und Tänzen wie Kontratanz, Allemande und Walzer gelegt.

Gerrit Berenike Heiter, Köln, Deutschland

Gerrit Berenike Heiter arbeitet aktuell an ihrem kumulativen Dissertationsprojekt der Theaterwissenschaft an der Universität Wien. Ihre Forschungsarbeit beschäftigt sich mit europäischen Druckerzeugnissen zu Tanz von 1573 bis 1717. Sie unterrichtet Tanzgeschichte an der Hochschule für Musik und darstellende Kunst Mannheim. In ihrer künstlerischen Tätigkeit als Schauspielerin, Tänzerin und Pädagogin hat sie sich auf Körper- und Maskentheater, Commedia dell’arte, Barocktheater und historischen Tanz spezialisiert. Neben der Mitwirkung in barocken Musiktheaterprojekten ist sie im Rahmen zeitgenössischer Stücke zu sehen, die an der Schnittstelle zwischen Tanz, Musik, Performance und Theater stehen.
(Fotografie: Sarah Robine)

La Spagna - the story of the bassadanza and basse danse
(Adam Bregman)

Captivated by the enigmatic bassadanza and basse danse, scholars and performers have taken great pains to interpret, imagine, theorize, and recreate the performance practices of this lofty form of fifteenth-century court dance for over a century. But missing pieces of the puzzle have led to holes in our understanding of this genre, including the correlation of the choreographies to the accompanying music and regional peculiarities. This owes in part to the fact that, while two related, contemporary, Franco-Burgundian sources survive with music and choreographies, every other dance manual or collection contains choreographies or music at best. And a comparison of these sources presents a variety of musical or choreographic styles for which it hardly seems plausible to label with a single denomination—“basse danse” or “bassadanza”—especially looking further into the sixteenth century. There is one dance, La bassa di castiglia, or La Spagna, however, that has left a trail of music and choreographies throughout Renaissance sources—the only dance to survive in both Italian and Franco-Burgundian dance manuals, and with several contrasting choreographies and nearly 250 different musical settings—that marvelously come together to depict the evolutionary arc of this genre. Using this uniquely important dance, my paper tells the story of the extraordinary life of the basse danse and bassadanza in music and movement across time periods and geographic regions.

Adam Bregman, Basel, Schweiz

Adam Bregman is a trombonist, musicologist, and pedagogue whose performance, research, and teaching focuses on the late Middle Ages, Renaissance, and early Baroque eras. Adam strives to share his love for music of the past and his avid interest in historical performance practices playing historical trombones from every era, presenting his research, and working with musicians of all ages and abilities who share the same passion. His experience has led him to develop an approach to all areas of his musical work that inextricably combines practice and theory—engaging with music on its own terms—and adds insights from other disciplines. This working method pervades his teaching and his research, which focuses on the performance practices of wind musicians in the Renaissance and court dances of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. All while maintaining the highest level of artistry on stage, as co-director of Basel-based historical wind ensemble Capella Helvetica or performing with such European and North American ensembles as Oltremontano
(Belgium) and Ciaramella (Los Angeles), Adam endeavors to instill his fascination with early music in modern audiences. Whether in the form of musical strains or words, he strives to contextualize the music of the past by telling a story so that, through music, we may better understand our cultural history, ourselves, and the ever-changing world around us.
(Photography: Cécile Mansuy)