Customer Reviews

Orchesography: 16th-Century French Dance from Court to Countryside

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A book to have if you're interested in Renaissance dance and which is especially useful for beginning dance reconstruction as it's quite accessible. It contains a translation of the whole text by Thoinot Arbeau (published in 1589) translated into English, plus notes and a set of modern notation for the dances. The text is structured as a dialogue between an old dancing master and his young student and contains descriptions of steps, various dance trivia and some social context info, and usually the music, coreography and possible variations (though not all of these for every dance). Many of these dances will be known to dancers of early music yet you could be surprised to learn that many so-called Arbeau dances do not follow his text much. Additionally there's quite a scope for improvisation along the guidelines given. The dances include many branles, a couple of pavanes and basse dances, tourdion and galliard variations, etc.

More than forty years since it was first printed in this translation, with the addition of a Labanotation appendix describing the dances, this remains one of the most important references for anyone interested in renaissance dance described characteristically for the period, in the form of a dialogue between a professor and his visitor, a returning student seeking advice on dance as a means of social interaction and particularly courting. Of almost equal importance to the descriptions of the dance steps are the tunes, presented in the original mensural notation. And many of these tunes should be familiar to anyone who has at least heard Peter Warlock's "Capriol Suite", derived from these pieces.

Originally published in the late 1500's, Orcheosgraphy is a wonderful look at period music and dance, in a well translated version. If you have any interest on either of the two, then you should have this book in your library.

This is the translation of a historical manuscript. For those who wish to immerse themselves in the study of medieval dance, this book is essential. But for those who simply wish to recreate a dance or two from this period for theatrical or entertainment purposes, this book would probably be overkill. The language throughout the text is well translated, and not too difficult to follow, but it contains a lot of references to musical theory and the descriptions of dance steps are sometimes a bit vague. I find it to be a wonderful reference, but not terribly useful as an introduction to medieval dance to those who are not already familiar with the language and a certain amount of music theory of that time.