Folk dancing, English; Folk music -- England -- History and criticism; Folk songs, English -- England -- History and criticism
These two characters expresse the figures
of the dance,
☉ This stands for the Man.
☽ This stands for the Woman.
In 1904 Miss Nellie Chaplin gave a performance of dances including
the “Pavane,” “Galliard,” “Allemande,” “Courante,” “Sarabande,” and
“Chacone,” and in 1906 led, through her study of old instruments
and old music, to an interest in other ancient dances, and with the
help of an expert in dancing she deciphered several of the dances
from _Playford’s Dancing Master_, harmonised the tunes, added the
appropriate steps from her collaborator’s knowledge of dancing, and
began to give public performances of the dances in London and different
parts of the country. No one who has ever seen these pupils of hers,
with their beautiful, old-fashioned dresses, dancing the old-world
dances accompanied by a string quartette and oboe, will ever forget
the charm of the performance. Miss Chaplin chose some of the most
complicated of the dances for revival, and has made the dancing of them
a real art. Some years later, Mr Cecil Sharp published a number of
Playford’s tunes and dances which were performed by the young ladies
of the South-Western Polytechnic, generally as illustrations of his
lectures on folk-dancing. They are now given by the Folk-Dance Society
at their performances. His method of giving the dances is different
from Miss Chaplin’s, because his pupils, unlike hers, do not use any
steps, but only give the figures with a walking or running step, which
is the same in all the dances. Which method is best is purely a matter
of taste.
Through Miss Chaplin, the Folk-Dance Society, and the Espérance Guild,
the country dances are now once more danced by numbers of people all
over the country, and it is to be hoped that they will never again
recede between the covers of a dancing-master’s book.
The country dance tunes are often ballad tunes.
The tunes played to-day by country fiddlers are often found in early
books of opera and printed collections of airs.
For instance, the tune of Tink-a-Tink, a country dance collected by Mr
Sharp and published in Set II. of _Country Dance Tunes, collected from
Traditional Sources_, is a song in the Opera “Bluebeard,” by Michael
Kelly, published in 1799.
“The Butterfly” in Set I. of the same series is apparently a
remembrance of the once popular “I’d be a Butterfly,” the words and
melody by Thomas Haynes Bayly. It is included in many books of airs.
The tunes did not always gain by passing through the hands of the
village musician.
IX. THE PRESENT-DAY REVIVAL OF THE FOLK-DANCE
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
Reviews
Reviews
No reviews yet
Be the first to share your thoughts on this work.
Elsewhere in the archive
Join the Discussion
Join the discussion
Sign in to leave a comment or review.
Sign InorCreate an account