Customer Reviews

Introduction to Baroque Dance: Dance Types

5 star:		(2)
4 star:		(0)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

This is a very well done, beautifully danced set of baroque dances. As a ballet dancer I'd always heard ballet evolved from French Baroque dance - here I saw it for the first time. You can see how dance had gotten about as formal and structured as it is possible to get - before evolving into another dance form.

Paige Whitley-Bauguess is a lovely woman and beautiful dancer.

This selection of Baroque dances is concise and to the point. The dancers are very professional and they present their art with passion and understanding. I am a musician who has played many of these dances since childhood, but after seeing the excerpts in this video, I have come to a much higher level of appreciation for the basics of how to interpret them.
This video is much better than any other resource currently available - a true MUST SEE for anyone who wants to perform repertoire such as the Bach Suites.
Buy it - you won't regret it!

It is dull and it is not very informative. Well overpriced for just two scholars who imitate the dance. For the money one could expect to see groups of dancers and ceiling cameras showing pairs and circles. Each dance could have been different and memorable. There could be some history and sociology before each piece. As a demonstration of an attempt to interpret baroque dance notation - maybe. As yet another template for a curious dance instructor - perhaps. But as a source for education - this is hardly valuable. The dance is not only the sequence of body movements. It is the atmosphere, it is the feast, it is the (only allowed publicly at that time) contact between men and women. The baroque dancing is also the demonstration and leveling of the social status and the 'right' demeanor. So there is the meaning in each movement and each pose.
The dance notation doesn't register all that so doesn't show this DVD.
One can hardly teach somebody to be a poet by showing how to move a pen on a paper. Likewise it is hardly possible to explain baroque dancing by showing leg movements only.