[SCA-Dance] SCAd-Dance Delving into the Trihory

[Alexander Clark]

Hi Darius (and Judith, et al.)!

I just checked the instructions at that link (below), and find some
problems with them. Besides the error you mentioned (right foot
instead of left at the end), they omit the pied en l'air gaulche at
the end of the double, and then they justify the speculation about
when to do the second version ("haulse talon"/"swing your heel") with
a snippet of quotation accompanied by a very misleading paraphrase.
The original is: "En lieu des trois pieds en l'air qui sont a la fin
de ce Triory, . . ." Translated: "In place of the three /pieds en
l'air/ that are at the end of the Triory, . . ." That seems to mean
that the ending that he is referring to is the same one (i. e. in the
same bar) that he already described before with pieds en l'air. In
other words, this is the ending of every repeat where you are supposed
do the later version and not the first. (He also refers to the ending
of the Montarde as the "fin", and it seems clear that it is the "fin"
every time it is played, so I must reject the hypothesis that "fin"
means only the very ending after which the dance is over.)

If one looks at the original French, it becomes more apparent that
Arbeau was not committed to his tabulation (the first description he
gives), because he says "marque pied" (touch foot) twice in the
dialogue to refer to the tabulated version where it says "pied en
l'air". This means that the first of the two explanations in the
dialogue is much more compatible with the second than the tabulation
is, and that he hadn't reconciled the early versions before going on
to describe the last version. This gives cause to doubt whether he
really intended the early versions as anything more than
approximations.

Unfortunately, the Evans/Sutton English-language version "corrects"
this inconsistency between Arbeau's tabulation and first dialogue
explanation, thus making it impossible for its readers to figure out
the relationship between the several versions of Arbeau's description
of this figure.

So the short answer is that Arbeau (in the original) does not indicate
that there are supposed to be different versions, is not consistent
about how it is supposed to be done if not with the heel movements,
does not indicate that his last version is not supposed to be done
every time, and says nothing to the effect that the last version is
only done in the last bar. In other words, the last version is the
most complete, of which the others are preliminary approximations.

Hope this helps.

-- 
Henry/Alex

On 2/1/13, David Learmonth <david.a.learmonth at gmail.com> wrote:
> Hi Judith!
>
> I reconstructed Trihory a few years ago too.  (you should come to my
> classes at Pennsic)  :)
>
> I fought with it for a while, having not done it before, but I came to
> basically the same conclusions as Del:
> http://www.pbm.com/~lindahl/del/sections/bransles9.html
> (oh, I think there might be a typo, where he says at the end on the last
> swing of your heels to raise your Right foot, but I think it was the Left
> in the book, or maybe I have to go back and look again).
>
>
> As for myself, I teach the 3 kicks version first, since it is most similar
> to a typical bransle, and then once they have tried that a few times, I
> show the heel pointing version, which yes, definitely ends up being "the
> twist" or something like that.  I end up calling it as "squiggle squiggle
> squiggle".
>
> As for when to do this, as opposed to Kicking, it is a bit unclear, so I do
> tend to alternate.  I've never been too critical on it (and I don't tend to
> dance it too often), but if you were to do it for performance, I would
> certainly choose a standard, such as alternating, or something like that.
>
> As for the Music, I do not have knowledge to help me there.  Del also makes
> a statement "there are no clues in the music as to where the end of the
> dance is."
>
>
> If you do find out more about the Music, that may shed light on this,
> please let us know!
>
> Darius
>
>
>
> On Fri, Feb 1, 2013 at 4:52 PM, Mary Railing <mrailing2 at yahoo.com> wrote:
>
>> In Mynydd Seren we do the version we learned from Katherine von
>> Regensburg
>> (of Lochach, so it may be Del's reconstruction). It's one of the dances
>> we
>> like to teach to the crowd at demos because it is so easy and because the
>> heel swishes quickly become  "shake your booty". (Standing on your toes
>> and
>> swishing your heels back and forth tends to carry your back side along,
>> too.) The call we use is, "double to left- and jump- kick-kick-kick;
>> double
>> to left- and jump- swish-swish-swish."
>>
>> --Urraca
>>
>>
>> ________________________________
>>  From: Rachel/Judith <judithsca at aol.com>
>> To: sca-dance at sca-dance.org
>> Sent: Friday, February 1, 2013 4:54 AM
>> Subject: [SCA-Dance] SCAd-Dance Delving into the Trihory
>>
>>
>> Salvete!
>>     I have been looking at the less commonly done yet imminently
>> interesting bransles in Arbeau, and I was wondering if anyone had
>> reconstructed the Trihory, and what their take on it was, especally the
>> enigmatic bit about ending the dance a different way wth heel swishes.
>> Does
>> anyone here know anything about modern Breton folk dance, and whether
>> their
>> might be a (stylistic/musical) connection between that and the Trihory?
>>
>> Judth
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