Thanks to all those who responded. I now have enough information to
give the Sicilian lady a different answer every week and thoroughly
confuse her :-)
I sent the request to four discussion groups - I have listed them at the
bottom of the note in case anyone wants to join the other groups. Here
are the replies to the question:
Why is the formation known as a "Sicilian Circle"?
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Tim Brooks:
Cos' it's a dansa you canta refusa?
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Hanny Budnick:
I have no idea where I read it, but apparently the "Sicilian" circle
started out as "Caecilian" circle, named in honor of St. Caecilia, the
muse of music.
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Ramsay John Martin:
I don't KNOW the answer, but I do have an hypothesis. English dances
had men on the left and ladies on the right. I was told in Sweden that
this is a custom which came from the practice of the men taking the warm
south side of cathedrals during gatherings with the women relegated to
the cold north. Thus, after marriage, and the newlyweds turned to face
the congregation, the man was on the left and the lady on the right.
Regardless of the reality of this reasoning, the English dances did have
the sexes divided.
The Spanish waltz instead had the alternate pattern-what many of us call
a Sicilian Circle formation. Several dance manuals in the last half of
the 19th century referred to that formation "as in the Spanish dance" in
contrast to the English pattern. I hypothesize that Spain and Sicily
may have seemed similar to some English dancing masters. Today we call
the "Sicilian" formation or as it had been earlier dubbed the "Spanish"
formation by the modern designation of "improper."
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Alan Winston:
I looked into this a while back; the stuff from the 1820s is my possibly
messed up version of stuff Susan de Guardiola told me about.
Executive summary:
- There's nothing Sicilian about it.
- There's nothing Circassian about it.
The "Spanish Dance" formation (duple improper) seems to indeed have come
from Spain but been adopted by English-speaking dancing masters.
Dancing master
G.M.S. Chivers turned that longways into a circle of
couples-facing-couples in the 1820s and called it a "Chiversian" circle.
[Much detail omitted here about weird variations.] That name wasn't
particularly popular. I honestly don't know whether "Sicilian" and
"Circassian" are misprisions of "Chiversian", but I haven't seen
anything from, eg, 1840 using any of those words.
So things go along from the 1820s to the 1870s and dances in that
formation (including a specific dance sequence called the Spanish Waltz,
rather than the genre of English dances of that name, which may have
been longways dances anyway).
The English dancing masters of this period liked to assign an exotic
foreign origin to the stuff they were teaching, when they weren't
proudly proclaiming themselves the inventors of it.
In the 1860s, a specific dance in that formation called "Sicilienne
Circle" was published, with the dancing master claiming that it was
formerly popular but had fallen out of favor because of bad behavior
from dancers. (That was in Hillgrove, 1865; he was an Englishman but
published in the USA, so I don't know whether he's saying it was popular
in England or in the USA.) I can't draw a clear line from that to the
formation being called "Sicilian Circle", and I have no evidence about
how popular "Le Sicilienne" was, but at some point after that - and it
might be some time in the mid-20th century, for all I know - that was
the established name for the formation.
Hope that helps!
Full Posting at
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/trad-dance-callers/message/3039
What Elias Howe has to say in 1859:
SICILIAN CIRCLE (form as for Spanish dance) 100 steps
All balance, swing four hands-ladies chain-balance to partners and
turn-right and left-all forward and back, forward and cross to face the
next couple.
So note that this is Howe calling a specific dance "Sicilian Circle" and
identifying it as "form as for Spanish dance"; to Howe, "Sicilian
Circle" isn't a genre.
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English Ceilidh Discussion Group:
http://www.cix.co.uk/~net-services/ec/#bp
Callers' Discussion List
http://www.sharedweight.net/mailman/listinfo/callers
Traditional Dance Callers List
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/trad-dance-callers
ECD mailing list
http://www.bacds.org/mailman/listinfo/ecd
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Happy dancing,
John
John Sweeney, Dancer, England john(a)modernjive.com 01233 625 362 &
07802 940 574
http://www.contrafusion.co.uk <http://www.contrafusion.co.uk/> for
Dancing in Kent
I have a Sicilian lady at our dances who is demanding to know why the
formation is known as a "Sicilian Circle". Can anyone help?
Thanks,
John
John Sweeney, Dancer, England john(a)modernjive.com 01233 625 362 &
07802 940 574
http://www.contrafusion.co.uk for Dancing in Kent
In regards to unwelcome behavior at a dance, our community has a middle-aged
man who zeros in on the (very thin) young women (we're a college town), and
lifts them off the floor, swings them around, drops their heads towards the
floor, etc. I watched him drop a first-time dancer, TWICE in one night. I
saw her go to the restroom and followed her. She was unhurt but badly
shaken and in tears.
As a member of the organizing committee, I had a talk with him and he denied
vehemently everything I saw, saying that she "fell." I told him someone
cannot "fall" if their feet are in the air to start with. As lead, his job
is to take care of his partner. On his behalf, let me say that many of the
young women enjoy his moves, but many do not.
Because of this dancer, another local community passed a policy that
requires dancers to keep one foot on the floor at all times. I felt that
policy was a message to young people that they didn't want young people
coming to their dances as dips and aerials (done carefully and well) are how
they like to dance.
After much discussion our Board passed a policy that clearly outlines our
requirements regarding moves which lift someone off the floor, but the thing
I like best is that it outlines behavior for ALL dancers to follow. It is a
personal peeve of mine when women (and sometimes men) complain about a
dancer behind his back but will not tell the dancer what he is doing
inappropriate. That sometimes makes it hard to confront the person because
he will say, "I've never had any complaints."
Our rambunctious dancer has been following these guidelines very well for
several months now.
Here is a link to the full policy:
http://godsdance.org/GODS/New_to_Contra_files/safe%20dancing%20policy.pdf
JoLaine
Hi, As many of you know, we are contradancing at the Burning Man
festival in NV at the end of the month for the second year with a
great 3 band lineup - Lift Ticket, Noreaster and Double Apex
http://burningmancontradance.com. Our main caller is Dave Eisenstadter
with Doug McLean, Jeff Spero (who is also one of the musicians) and
Tracy Feldman (who is a beginning caller but has the advantage that
she can firedance while she calls). Our last caller was going to be
Tara Bolker but she has had to reluctantly drop out for family
reasons. Which leads me to ask - do any of you know of anyone with
calling talent who is going, has gone in the past or could perhaps be
persuaded to go to Burning Man this year (I have some extra tickets,
but no more money to subsidize).
Finally if you go to our web page, follow the 'if you want to camp
with us..." link and skim
through to the end you will find my discussion about how I hope to
keep the camp going in the future without my heavy subsidies.
Starting next
year we will have a Kickstarter campaign (check wikipedia page if
unfamiliar) and have ~$300 camp dues to cover food water and bringing
in the talent (separate from the Burning Man gate fee). There are no
guarantees we will get enough response to cover the costs but I am
hopeful. But you could say that a selling point for anyone
considering coming is that this is the last year that it is guaranteed
to happen.
Finally I would humbly suggest looking at my somewhat unusual take on
an intro- to- contra page linked from the main page.
Thanks and best wishes, Mark 352 373 3202
