[SCA-Dance] looking for a few good dances to start our group

Charlene Charette clclists1 at earthlink.net
Thu May 15 22:26:04 EDT 2008


And even fewer people in the SCA seem aware that the round mixer version 
is NOT an SCA invention.  It was created by John Fitzhugh Millar and 
published in his book "Elizabethan Country Dances" in 1985.

--Perronnelle

Mary Railing wrote:
> Many people in the SCA seem unaware of this, but the mixer version of Half 
> Hannikin is an SCA invention.  The actual dance is quite different.  This 
> is not the result of ambiguous instructions in Playford.  Someone made a 
> deliberate decision to create a stripped down dance.  As a teaching dance 
> this works, but so would many more authentic dances.
> 
> --Urraca
> 
> On Wed, 14 May 2008 tmcd at panix.com wrote:
> 
>> On Sun, 11 May 2008, Alex Clark <alexbclark at pennswoods.net> wrote:
>>> At 04:09 PM 5/8/2008 -0500, Tim McDaniel wrote:
>>>>> & are there any others that are simple for beginners?
>>>> I've always been fond of Half Hannigan for a warmup.
>>>> - it's vigorous without being exhausting (if your music isn't too
>>>>    long)
>>>> - it's the prototypical English Country Dance, consisting of nothing
>>>>    BUT doubling, siding, and arming
>>> On the contrary, this does not make it a prototype. It is more like
>>> an eviscerated ECD.
>> There's no more evidence that it was designed by cutting down a dance
>> than there is that it was built minimally.  It does practice the basic
>> steps (other than set and turn single).
>>
>>>> - it's a mixer, so it's good for "how do you do?" or a brief "hi,
>>>>    Jane, long time no see!"
>>> I advise against teaching this modern dance to beginners.
>> I see that the Terpsichore booklet is misleading when it states the
>> usual SCA version is "Playford 1651" when the source at
>> <http://www.contrib.andrew.cmu.edu/~flip/contrib/dance/playford.html#Playford_43>
>> or <http://www.pbm.com/~lindahl/playford_1651/050small.html>
>> shows it as Longways for as many as will.
>>
>> I'm not at all good at interpreting Playford: is there a good
>> reconstruction that my brief Googling didn't show?
>> <http://members.ozemail.com.au/~grayn1/DDances.html#Halfe Hanikin>
>> looks basically plausible to me: you have to get #1 man and #N woman
>> "offside" and then get them back in dancing with the same sex as
>> Playford specifies.  But it doesn't state exactly how #1 man and #N
>> woman get offside and the rest progress, and then get back in, and the
>> ways coming to my mind right now feel awkward to me.
>>
>> Just to make sure: does the music in the facimile match the music as
>> I believe it's usually played in the SCA?
>>
>> Dannet Lincoln
>>
> 
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