The Newcastle Country Dancers perform their namesake dance at the Northern California Renaissance Faire, 2010. For more information about English country dancing, see www.englishcountrydancing.net.
Wir arbeiten gerade an diesem Ding, und richten uns nach Cecil Sharp "The Playford Ball" - das hier ist eine sehr gute Ausarbeitung, die werden wir uns mal ganz genau ansehen...
I would like to see this done with the dancers taking smaller steps. I believe it would work better and be easier on their bodies, esp. the knees and feet.
Interesting! We do it rather differently here in England. The patterns and moves are the same, but we dance them with more elegance and lilt rather than the jumping about shown here.
morevaseret There are plenty of English country dancing groups here in the US that perform with elegance rather than the livelier format seen here. They were obviously portraying the way the working classes would dance, which you also see in many British-made period dramas. It all depends on the individual dance and the context.
mimmar3891 The performance was interesting and different and I enjoyed watching it. I wasn't being critical, just making a point. Newcastle is danced differently here. There are many dances which would have been performed in a more lively manner by the peasantry, Newcastle wasn't one of them. It is easy to be fooled as a lot of British period dramas use fabricated rather than real dances of the period. Sometimes it is just not possible to do the proper dances when used as background to the action of the play. I know because I have performed in some. What we were asked to do was not a true dance, just an approximation of the moves to music. I do love doing the dances properly though and as a group my friends and I have a real dance after the filming.
morevaseret What I was trying to convey is that the way this group performed Newcastle is not the way all groups in the US perform Newcastle. I agree with you that the dance wasn't really written to be a lively song for the peasantry so they took some liberties there. But I have not been fooled by British period dramas. I know sometimes real dances aren't used, but I'm thinking of times when they were, like Mr. Beveridge's Maggot in Pride and Prejudice. There was another real one they used but the name escapes me. So my main point is, this group is not representative of the US as a whole.
mimmar3891 Point taken. I'm glad that there are dancers in the US who enjoy the early dances performed in the way that was taught by the Dancing Masters of old. They are just too good to lose.
The group doing it is called "Newcastle", and they are a "peasant ECD group". They were doing this as a stage show at a Ren Faire, where big movement and bouncy is much more interesting to the crowd than small stately dance movements. That said, personally I find bouncy a lot more fun than "stately. :-)
