[SCA-Dance] SCA Created Dances

[Jane & Mark Waks]

Collecting some responses to this thread:

> You're right that Salterello la Regina is an SCA choreography, I believe
> it's already been mentioned.  A full description by its choreographer, (who
> changed his name a few times, so I don't know which one he used in the
> article) and his thinking behind it, is in one of the earlier Letter of
> Dance.
> 
> At the time, he wanted to create a dance to go with one of those really neat
> medieval dance melodies since no dance instructions existed for that time
> period.

Even more specifically, he was trying an experiment in recreating a 
dance based on period imagery: trying to take a couple of the paintings 
of period dance and compose something to match them. Unfortunately, I 
think the dance illustrates the limits of that particular line of 
experimentation -- in the end, I've concluded that the dance, while 
great fun, is probably wrong in nearly every respect. But it all made 
more sense when we were a lot younger.

> I haven't seen anyone mention Hole in the Wall.  The SCA choreography
> is actually a bit different than modern ECD, with the excessive bowing
> and scraping, palming, early 17th century steps, and if you add in
> sharking (or kidnapping, as it was called when I learned it), it all
> adds up to a related, but different, dance than the one modern ECD
> folks do.

Kind of a slippery slope, given how far many of our typical renditions 
are from period-accurate. But it's true that HitW is probably further 
than most.

> I suspect it is due to Patri that Hole in the Wall is an SCA tradition.

Possible, although it would be a delicious irony, given that Patri is 
certainly the one who killed the dance locally. (I *think* it was Mara 
who decided that it had run its course and should get taken out of 
commission, but the actual execution was conducted by having Patri come 
in and teach everyone how to do it correctly. That intimidated everybody 
to the point that they stopped asking for it.)

> I still seem to think I saw this dance in a 1685-ish edition of Playford, but alas, I don't own a copy to be able to check that.

Patri and I went through this many years ago. IIRC, the dance first 
appears in a 1698 flyleaf addendum to Playford. (Which is why I give it 
more of a break than many OOP dances -- at least it's 17th century...)

				-- Justin