Baroque Dance

This is fun! We have a visiting clinician in the area this weekend running a set of workshops for music students, teaching them about baroque dance. For years these kids have been playing minuets, bourrées, gavottes, sarabandes, gigues, courantes and the like. Now they're learning about the historical roots and kinesthetic forms of the dances they were meant to accompany. The afternoon was the session for kids under 12, during which Fiona learned to dance a minuet. In the evening, and continuing tomorrow, is the session for older and more advanced kids and adults. They learned the minuet, gavotte and sarabande tonight. Tomorrow will bring a bourrée as well, and a few other fun movement games and no doubt a lot more interesting background on the social conditions and traditions these dances evolved in.

Music students are such cool kids. There were about a dozen and half in the school gym on a Friday night, pretending they had frock coats and frilly shirts on and pointing their toes in stately steps -- focused, attentive, having fun, getting to know each other, learning, laughing, being totally respectful of the teacher, each other and the space they were in.