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SCA: dance event
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jarethsgirl's first event as autocrat and it went
very smoothly. Ensemble Rigodon (that's On the Mark's SCA persona)
performed and we were well-received; people even got up and danced
to our last piece, Rostiboli Gioioso. That was fun! One of the songs
we did was a poem by a local poetry laurel that I set to music (based
on a minnesang); alas, the poet was not there to hear it. Oh well,
some other time. The choir also performed and sounded good. The
consort was supposed to perform, but either they didn't or I managed
to miss it somehow, which is disappointing.
I played with the consort and other guest musicians for part of the
evening ball. It's been a while since a local event had enough planned
dancing to be worth bringing the dulcimer, so that was very pleasant.
I haven't been paying much attention to dance practice, so I was surprised
by some of the pieces that got done at the ball. I didn't know our
dancers did Prexoniera (an Italian ballo) until I saw my arrangement of
it in the music binder. There were several other balli too, and
Gracca Amoroso (a later Italian dance that I have to re-learn one of
these days). Cai and lyev seemed to be doing much of the
teaching during the day and doing a good job of it.
I got to spend time talking with dr_zrfq, who came up from
Atlantia, and lorimelton and ralphmelton, who
don't often come to events but like to dance. I met some new members
from our group and one of our neighbors who were at their first "regular"
(local, non-camping) events.
I expected this event to draw 50-60 people. I didn't hear a head count, and we might not have one because there was no formal sign-in unless you needed to sign a waiver, but I think we were over 100. That's great for a (mostly) local dance event! We had some visitors from nearby groups, too.
The event was at the University of Pittsburgh's student union, in their ballroom. This was the first time we've used the site and it was nearly perfect for this event. It would work well for other non-fighting events without elaborate food needs, too. We had two rooms, one about twice the size of the other. The floors are carpetted (I tend to assume ballrooms have bare wood floors) and very comfortable to dance on. There were enough tables and chairs (while still having plenty of space to dance in), and we were able to have pot-luck food (no cooking facilities on site, but plugging in crock pots etc was fine). Apparently Pitt is enough of a union shop that we weren't allowed to do much setup and cleanup, which is both fine and surprising in a site we didn't have to pay for. Parking cost $5, but since the event was free that's fine. Parking was a couple blocks away -- a bit of a hassle for carrying the dulcimer, but not impossible.
We should do this again.
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Friar in the Well (sung, with instruments; this was our nod to both "dance" and "romance")
Tesara
Ho Ho Ho (14th-century French drinking song, sung in English)
Marchesana
Neptune Rex (the original work I mentioned)
Rostiboli Gioioso
Tesara, Marchesana, and Rostiboli are all 15th-century Italian balli, and in all cases we did my arrangements. I wasn't trying to make this the "me" show; our goal was dance music that mostly wouldn't be played that day otherwise. (We knew people would dance Rostiboli, but we really like playing that one so we did it anyway.) We've been working on an Estampie that wasn't ready yet, and we wanted to leave English country dance for others, and there's a lot of lovely four-part music that's hard for the three of us to play, and when all was said and done we had ended up in ballo territory.
The choir did Tanzen Und Springen, Belle Que Tiem a Vie, Follow Me, and, err, two others that I hope