[SCA-Dance] Contrapasso 15th C / 16th C

[Justin du coeur]

On Mon, Dec 3, 2012 at 1:41 AM, <tmcd at panix.com> wrote:

> But that page says 15th C, and Caroso was late 16th C.  Did
> contrapasso (like I think riprisa and continenza) change its meaning
> between the centuries?


Short answer is "probably", but it's a bit hard to be certain.  It's been
close to 20 years since I last looked at the early contrapasso, but at the
time the step was hellishly controversial -- it's the step that, as I
recall, the Accademia della Danza couldn't make heads or tails of, and Dr.
Brainard's interpretation was fluctuating.

By and large, while it can be interesting to compare the early and late
Italian steps, it's typically hard to conclude much about one from the
other.  We're talking a century-plus between Domenico and Caroso, and
things evolved heavily in every respect -- choreography, meaning of steps,
and general aesthetic are all pretty dramatically different.  When even the
doppio doesn't quite mean the same thing any more, you have to assume that
a lot has changed.

(Heck, I recommend caution when using Caroso and Negri side-by-side, given
that things clearly weren't even consistent between the contemporaries...)