29 Apr
2013
29 Apr
'13
9:13 p.m.
On 4/29/2013 11:57 AM, Colin Hume wrote:
US English is where I had my first
exposures to Morpeth Rant, Cumberland
Square Eight, Bonnets So Blue, Nottingham Swing, and Steamboat,
although I'll agree that these are rarely done.
(For non-English-dancers playing along at home, US English includes
"Historical" - stuff reconstructed (often fancifully) from publications
from 1650 forward, "Traditional" - stuff seen in "the wild" - and
what
I'll call "Modern": a ton of stuff choreographed and composed from the
20th century forward. (So in the US, dancers often dance to stuff
choreographed by American Gary Roodman with music by American Jonathan
Jensen, for example, but we still call it English.) "Playford" in the
strict sense would be historical dance published by John or Henry
Playford, but in the sense used in England now, if I understand it
right, would be "Historical" (not just Playford but Walsh, Kynaston,
Thompson, etc, etc) and Modern.
If I have this right, one might plausibly see Mayfair or Handel With
Care (selected as examples of Modern English, although I now realize
that they're both in more-or-less Historical style) at a Zesty Playford
evening. Is that right?
-- Alan
On Sat, 27 Apr 2013 15:25:37 -0700, Alan Winston
wrote:
I think of good
English (in the US sense) as robust (with bursts of
slipping and skipping as appropriate), never mincing or plodding even
to slow tunes, with movement from the chest, unafraid to use lots of space.
My sense from reading your notes is that Zesty
Playford is what I'd
think of (as an American who has danced English in the SF Bay Area,
Boston, etc) as good English dancing with extra playfulness.
I'm not sure that
some Americans would class it as "good", since it
isn't the way they've been taught to dance English. Questions: Is "Playford" the Brit usage
where you mean what US
means by "English" dancing? (Since the linked video is of Jenny
Pluck Pears, which fits both categories, I couldn't tell.)
Yes it is. To us,
"English" also includes "Traditional English" such
as Morpeth Rant and Cumberland Square Eight.