Herrskapsdanser är så jätteroligt

Back in 1795 one of the Luleå gentry started writing a notebook for himself, in which he recorded (at least) musical notes for dances, plus descriptions of the steps. Years flew by, and in 1996 the notebook was rescued from a container outside of a house in Luleå which was being demolished. A few more years flew by, and over the last two years some Swedish dance scholars have been working with the notebook to interpret the dances. Now that they have a number of them ready to dance they are teaching a class in Herrskapsdanser (dances of the gentry) here in Luleå, one Wednesday a month till spring. Tonight was our first session.

They had given a sneak preview of a couple of the dances at the folk music dance course I attended this weekend, which meant that I already knew today's dances, which made it easier to help the others in my set. By some lucky twist of fate we were exactly 24 people tonight, which was perfect, since one of our dances was for four couples in a square set, the other for three couples longways.

The first dance we did is called ( Gustaf Vasa )

I will have to type up the second dance later, as I am out of time tonight, not only do I work in the morning, but after work I will take the train to Umeå so that I can meet with some folk at the Archaeology department on Friday to discuss the possibility of some collaboration in my upcoming research, since they are my "local" archaeology department here in Sweden.

[edited years later to give a link to the book that has since been published (in Swedish) with some of the dances from this dance manual.]