Completely fantastic video to share

This morning, I was pleased to receive an email with one of the best dance instruction videos I've ever seen attached to it. The dance in question - The Black Nag - is one that is found in the earliest versions of Playford's The English Dancing Master, and it also happens to be one of my favorite dances to both teach and do. Take a look!



What I actually love the most about this video is the perspective. One of the most beautiful parts of English Country Dance is the patterns that they trace on the ground while you are dancing. When I first learned this style of dance, the floor patterns never occurred to me at all. Which, honestly, is a little bit odd. I had been marching in the band in halftime shows for many years by that point, and was very aware of how everyone worked together to create a picture that was only truly visible from the bleachers. I even remember thinking about line maintenance and dressing right and left appropriately, but the overarching pattern never entered my mind. Well, not yet.

In 1995, I was co-dance captain for the very first year of Cavalier Dayes of Texas. That year, I was a lady of the court (which was much less taxing then my next role there, but that's a story for another day) and somehow ended up doing the bulk of the dance instruction. To be fair, when I began teaching, I wasn't particularly good at it yet, but we had a good time out on the tennis courts at my apartment complex running the Nonesuch over and over again.

That year, we were performing for four days at Waterloo Park in Austin, Texas. For a variety of reasons, I absolutely adored that site. One of my favorite parts of the park was the huge tree that the concession area was built around. The way the park is situated, the tree was at the bottom of a small cliff, and the pub was located at the base of the tree on the bottom level. From the top side of the cliff, you could walk out on top of the pub and look over the grounds. We took our breaks up top there, and it was always very enjoyable to sit for a moment and overlook the festival grounds.

Primarily because of the flat terrain, we had chosen the area in front of the pub to do evening dance. For some reason, which is now lost to time, I had to step out of evening dance one day to run up to the porch. I had been rushing to get back down in time to at least Nonesuch, but sadly I was too slow to make it for the beginning. As I was digging through my baskets, I chanced to look over the railing at my dancers below me on the ground.

It was like a whole new world opened up. I'd never even considered what the dance looked like from above! I stood there the entire time, watching the lines form and reform, the heys circle around, all the slipping as they meshed the sets together. Suddenly all the circles and squares in the dance manuals made sense. There was a system - a pattern - in here that I suddenly recognized. It was the largest, clearest a-ha moment I have ever had in dance, and it remains one of my most cherished memories. Even as I write this, I can see them dancing in my mind, and it never fails to bring a huge smile to my face.