Missy - Supplemental a Fair and a Dance

 This week I had 2 encounters that I will generously interpret as Shakespearean. 

The first was a new dance from the Playford Dance Master book called Hole in the Wall. 

Here is a decidedly Regency version that is mostly correct (right music and mostly right moves). 

And here is another where they didn’t have to worry about plot and closeups so did All the right moves. 

This dance is much more mathematical and had a bonus introduction us to sharking. 

Sharking is when you cut in on someone but you are elegant and flirty about it. 

I am wretched at sharking but it certainly added an athleticism to our dancing that we’d managed to avoid heretofore. 

I’m looking forward to the party and have been 3D printing and sewing bits up to be ready. 

I am going as Titania’s lady-in-waiting Moth, so I’m adding wings and elements to a late Tudor gown that look fairy like or moth like depending. 

Probably my favorite thing about all of this is that Moth may be an early typo/ bad read by Blake. It’s possible that the character is supposed to be Mote and in the play represented by a disembodied off stage voice. 

I feel delighted that I might, in fact, be going to a Midsummers Nights Dream party as a Shakespearean typo/misunderstanding!

Also my sweet and long suffering husband has agreed to let me dress him up and I’m all excited about being matchy matchy errors. 

My other “Shakespearean” encounter of the week happened because we went to the Renaissance Fair  on Saturday. 

I love it so much. 

It’s one of the many reasons I love living in Maryland. 

Maryland has a bangin Ren Fair. 

We ate not at all Elizabethan food. 

 Went to see genuine Shakespeare inspired entertainment. 

Watched and listened to artisans and musicians do Jacobian style feats of wonder. 

I Pretended to be pirate Hamlet.

And finally, we hung out in period style theaters and laughed and were amazed by players, sword swallowers and jugglers. 

Much of the point of this Shakespeare project for me is simply to enjoy as audiences did the works of the bard and I think the Fair was a delightful taste of that atmosphere (minus bear bating and cockfights). 

A grand time was had by all. 

Missy - Supplemental- Song and Dance

I’m in a choir called The Choral Arts Society of Frederick. We are in the build up for our winter concert. This year we are doing holiday songs and one of those songs is Blow, Blow, thou Winter Wind. 

Blow, Blow, thou Winter Wind is lyrically Shakespeare, from the comedy As You Like It, and the musical arrangement is by the composer Sarah Quartel.

Here is another choir doing the same arrangement we are working on. 

I will say that I think our Tenors and Basses are better but it’s pretty close for the Altos and Sopranos.

It’s been stuck in my head since rehearsal Tuesday night.

In other supplemental Shakespeare encounters, we went to Shakespearean/medieval dance night again yesterday. 

Again we had a ball. There were even more people and our move up hall move down hall started getting cramped. 

We reviewed the Tangle (that conga line like one) and the Maltese Bransel (the violent stomps one) and started learning two new dances. Both were English country dances  

Our first new dance was called Gathering Peascods. Here are people who actually know how to do it demonstrating.  

Our version besides being way more awkward and disoriented was, once again, more violent. 

Our instructor was calling out the moves in a sing song way. The chorus (which aligns with the dancers moving in and out of the center) went “and the men move in and clap, and the women move in and clap, and the men move in and they don’t clap and they all turn around”.

This is very helpful. Our addition was that when the men don’t clap they must have a “fuck you guys” moment. This initially manifested as the men flipping each other off but then quickly degenerated into the men trying to mash each others toes again. 

There was one hilarious moment where we had to dance around two of them rolling about on the floor establishing dominance, or some such. 

We achieved peak medieval/renaissance merrymaking. 

This dance is a pre restoration dance found in the manual The Dancing Master by the composer and publicist John Playford. The first publication of this manual was in 1651 and it went into reprint at least 18 times until at least 1728. 

So it’s a little late for Shakespeare to have seen the manual but, depending on how old the dances were when published, probably not too late for him to have tried them out.

The next dance we started to learn was called Jenny Plucked Pears and it too is from the Playford manual. 

Here is the exact video we watched. 

 

This one is good for a number of reasons, not least is the “thirstiest 60 year old woman in the world”. Watch the video. You will see what our instructor meant. 

We all want to be her at 60. 

Each of the dancing classes has started with a segment on etiquette and historical significance but mostly the focus has been on flirting. For instance palms are very intimate and should never touch your partner (thanks Romeo!).

This dance is apparently a great example of “meat market” dancing when everyone shows off and flirts with everyone else. 

We certainly gave it a go and had one stumbling but flirty run through before our time was up. 

I need to practice my spins… also telling my left from my right. 

A grand time was had by all. 

Here we are doing the Tangle. You can see how packed it was and how tangled.