Brawls (often known at Bransles or Branles) are wonderfully vital dances that were part of villages festivals in the Middle Ages and ballrooms of the Renaissance.  The footwork and music of these dances are among the oldest in recorded history.   Danced in circles with increasingly challenging rhythms, patterns, and gestures, they are fun, peppy, easy to learn and remember (sort of).

Dancing bransles continue to fascinate us teachers, historians and people-watchers.  What’s the deal with a zillion variations? Why does the footwork always start to the left? Why are the women always standing on the men’s right? How to survive the aerobic thrills of simultaneous hopping in the Peas Bransle? Or, being thrown in the air in the Toss The Duchess variation?  (Or, doing the tossing!)

You should care about these dances as they are gold in the classroom and in the community.  Whether you are teaching math, history, experiential education for adolescents, or working socially with adults, these simple dances are grist for the mill, providing challenge, risk, rewards, and lots of laughter. For instance, the simple stepping left with large steps and then right with smaller steps – but in the same rhythm and tempo – offer up a bunch of spacial and coordination challenges leading to probable mis-steps, major screw-ups, and confusion amidst the steady precise stepping rhythm of the group.  The individual finds his or her place within the circle of the community.

We will be teaching six variations of Bransles this summer in upstate New York, with lesson plans, music, and a choreography suitable for the classroom, festival, or stage presentation.  Other dances in our historical survey include a sword dance, a weaving dance, pavanne, minuet, Grand March, vintage polka variations, rotary and cross-step waltzes including pivots, an historical cakewalk (not the party version), one-steps, two-steps, simple and complex swing variations (with an aerial or two!), Jitterbug Stroll, an original Gum Boot and a contemporary tango appropriate for classroom and community dancing.

Learn it all and more at our upcoming Dancing Through Time conference July 27 – 31, 2009 at Spacial Dynamics Institute International Training Center, Mechanicville, NY.

Valerie Baadh Garrett