16th Century Dancing

In today's lesson we were introduced to 16th Century dancing, which we will be learning for our performance of Twelfth Night in February.
We were shown a video of 16th century dancing of a group of men and women together in a large ball room, they never make physical contact and it was seen as "social dancing"
It is called Minuet Baroque dancing and would usually of been performed in front of the king, which was King Louis the 14th. It origniates from France.
The movements are Ballet influenced, but not massively. The pointed and flexed feet is definitely influenced by ballet, and the step ball changes and gallops. When the men and women come together they never actually touch each other, they hold their hands up to each other when they turn but never make physical contact. 

We began to devise a dance piece today in class to the music featured in Twelfth Night "The wind and the rain" which Feste sings at the end of the play. We devised 2 and a half minutes of dance choreography which was reallly good and the movements are good and with more rehearsals will look very sharp and effective. We all begin in a line of girls and a line of boys standing opposite each other, and then we all walk towards each other into the center and hold up our hands to each other and move round in a circle, and end up switching sides so the boys are on the opposite side to us again. Each pair then individually walk towards each other using step ball changes and going up onto tip toes, then pointing the other leg out in front, 4 counts. It is like ballet when you go onto pointe, then let the other leg brush through when you lower.
After each pair have done this we then get back into opposite lines and all in unison step together, like a grapevine step. To the side, behind, to the side and then back again. The girls hold their arms out to portray holding the massive dresses the had to wear! We then all skip round in a circle together and pair off with a diferent partner and perform 16 counts of movement together, which involve skipping, bowing, turning together and courtesing. 
It looks really good considerinf we only had 2 hours of work on the piece and it will look very effective for our Twelfth Night performance.