In
the back of an unknown edition of Shakespeare, I
once encountered a brief list of recommended period
dances for use in Shakespeare's plays. I recall that
the author suggested that choreographers use the
branle or the hay for the first of two dances in
The Winter's Tale. I imagine this suggestion
enlightened most directors and choreographers no
more than it aided me. "Branle" and "hay"
remained arcane words scribbled on a notecard. It
is more likely that the director or choreographer-if
there even was one-would adapt a few contemporary
folk-dance steps for the shepherd dance, arrange
a display of gymnastic flips and leaps for the satyr
dance, or cut one or both of the dances all together.
At least that is what I did when first faced with
the mysterious directions, "[Music]. Here a
dance of Shepherds and Shepherdesses" and "Here
a dance of twelve Satyrs."1
I composed a simple, slow combination for the shepherds
and shepherdesses' dance based on moves I knew from
swing dancing and cut the satyr dance completely.
Quite by
accident, I had discovered that there were dances in Shakespeare's
plays. Knowing that I had taken several dance courses, my classmates
had nominated me choreographer for a class production of The
Winter's Tale in the fall of 1997. My initial attempts at
research met with little success. A library catalog search of
"Shakespeare" and "dance" found only one
book: Alan Brissenden's Shakespeare and the Dance, which
provides an extensive analysis of the literary and dramatic
function of dancing in the plays, but offers no practical suggestions
for how a director or choreographer would go about staging any
of the dances mentioned.
Shakespeare
and the Dance
does offer a small but useful glossary of Renaissance dance
terms in which a director or dramaturge could look up the mysterious
words and learn that a branle or brawl (as it is pronounced)
is a:
(a) Step
in the basse dance which appears to have been a rocking step
in which the body remains on one spot but the weight is moved
from one foot to the other. The precise interpretation has
aroused much discussion. (1521) [the earliest use as cited
in the O.E.D.]
(b)
Linked dance related to the basse dance, usually
in duple time; the dancers move sideways instead
of forward. Thoinot Arbeau gives directions for
twenty-four different branles in Orchesography
(1589) and there were many others. (1541)2
The curious
choreographer, finding understanding of the branle to be dependent
on knowledge of the basse dance, might then proceed to look
up "basse dance" in Brissenden's glossary. Such a
search would lead to the definition of the basse dance as:
A
rather solemn dance usually in duple time, without
any jumps. Widespread in the Middle Ages, it seems
to have developed into the pavan. 3
This definition
raises several problems. The most obvious quandry being that
Shakespeare was neither writing during the Middle Ages nor setting
The Winter's Tale in that period. Therefore, a basse
dance does not seem to be an appropriate dance to perform in
a Shakespeare play. Secondly, neither the satyr dance nor the
shepherd and shepherdess dance transpire during solemn moments
in Scene 4 of Act 4. On the contrary, both dances occur at a
festive and raucous sheep-shearing celebration. Furthermore,
while the basse dance is "without any jumps," the
servant who announces the satyrs specifies that "not the
worst of / the three [dancers] but jumps twelve foot and a half
by the'/ squier" (IV.iv. 340-342). Even if the director
ignores these inconsistencies and compiles all the information
known-that the branle is in duple time and the dancers move
sideways with a rocking step and no jumps-he or she still lacks
sufficient information to stage a dance. These definitions fail
to specify the proper number of dancers or couples, the floor
pattern, or the arrangement of the steps. Looking up the pavan
or the hay leads to similarly unhelpful definitions. While this
research may be interesting in of itself, the choreographer
doing the research has drawn no closer to having a dance to
teach the actors at the next rehearsal.
There was,
however, a second part to the definition of the branle. The
latter definition (b) offers another avenue for research. In
addition to a description of the dance's structure, a "linked
dance," or one where the dancers hold hands, and direction,
"sideways instead of forward," the definition mentions
twenty-four variations of the branle published in 1589, roughly
twenty years before Shakespeare wrote The Winter's Tale.
This date is more contemporaneous with Shakespeare's work than
the date mentioned in the prior definition (a), 1521. The reference
directs us to a volume entitled Orchesography by Thoinot
Arbeau. Now, at last we find a book that lists steps, explanations,
illustrations, and other details pertinent to performing dances
like the hay and branle.