History is My Playground

Set List

"Typical" depends very much upon context: is this a 3-hour ball or a 2-hour ball? What is the experience level of the dancers? What is the decade and century we are doing?

A 3-hour ball for the 18th and most of the 19th century is typically going to consist of 15 dances if the musicians would like 2 breaks. It is also common to have a ball with only one break with refreshments, or one water break for a dance ending at midnight with midnight supper and post-supper party games (a typical late Victorian/Edwardian New Year's Eve program).

For other eras, like Medieval and Renaissance, dances can require a very different style of teaching. Once the basic patterns are learned, successive dances require less and less instruction. For 20th century dances, couple dancing has taken over as the popular social dance form, so dances require prior instruction, like a 2-hour afternoon workshop. Then during the ball, people have the entire 2 or 3-hour ball to practice with a wide variety of partners.

For family festivals and other kinds of dance instruction like school programs, I am usually teaching a small number of dances - like 1 or 2 dances - repeatedly, as children come in small groups to learn a dance from a particular time period, before moving on to dip candles and churn butter and watch the weaving and broom making demonstrations.

Influences & Inspiration

Historical dancing:
* Nahant Vintage Dance weekends
* Newport Vintage Dance weeks
* George Washington Balls, Williamsburg, VA
* Civil War Balls: Cornets & Cannons, Grande Winter Ball - Ohio Statehouse, 73rd OVI Regimental Band, Sherman House, Shannon Woods
* Flying Cloud Academy of Vintage Dance
* Commonwealth Vintage Dancers
* Dvorana Dance
* Dayton Historic Dance
* Forget-Me-Not Vintage Dancers
* New Orleans Dance Week
* Prague-Provence Dance Weeks
* Stanford Historic Dance Week
* Grand Traditions Vintage Dance
* Society of Creative Anachronism
* Split Tree Farm
* Dance Grand Prix Italia

Historical Clothing:
* Victoria and Albert Museum
* Fashion Museum Bath
* Palais Galleria (Paris Fashion Museum)
* Musee de la Mode et du Textile
* Palazzo Pitti
* National Portrait Gallery, London
* National Portrait Gallery, Washington, DC
* Kent State University
* Museum of Fine Arts, Boston
* American Textile History Museum, Lowell, MA
* Musee d'Orsay, Paris
* National Gallery of Canada, Ottawa
* Walters Art Museum, Baltimore
* Stuttgart Museum
* Royal Museum of Fine Arts, Belgium
* Louvre Museum
* Blenheim Palace
* Jane Austen Museum, Bath
* Jane Austen's Home, Chawton
* Nymphenberg Palace
* North Carolina History Museum
* Old Courthouse Vicksburg
* Cincinnati Art Museum

International Folk Dancing
* Narodno! International Folk Dancers
* Zivio! Southern Slavic Dancers
* Celtic Renaissance Consort
* Royal Scottish Country Dance Society
* Kyiv Ukrainian Dance Ensemble
* Bagatelle French Club
* Folklore Village Dancers
* Pittsburgh Tuesday Night Folk Dancers
* Miami Valley Folk Dancers

Teachers - the biggest influence upon me as a dance teacher has been the vast number of talented and passionate people who have shared their love of dance with the world. There are at least 200 teachers under whom I have studied. To list only a few:

* Hannah Artuso
* Lieven Baert
* Marc Cassler
* Dick Crum
* Erich Gansmuller
* Martha Griffin
* Petur Iliev
* Zeljko Jergan
* Harry Khamis
* Roo Lester
* Artemis Mourat
* Yves Moreau
* Mady Newfield
* Lee Otterholt
* Steve Percer
* Richard Powers
* Patri Pugliese
* Cathy Stevens
* Marianne Taylor
* Hannelore Umfried
* Yvonne Vart
* Teodor Vascilescu
* Susanna del Vecchio
* Joan Walton

Setup Requirements

Sound system: Microphone, audio jack for laptop or hookups for live musicians if they are using amplification

2. Empty space for dancing

3. Chairs along the wall where people can change into dance shoes