Let's Dance! A Participatory Workshop for Researching Medieval Dance Composition and Performance

This workshop is open to attendees of the 61st International Congress on Medieval Studies who sign up during registration.

How can we study medieval dance when the object of our study no longer exists? This participatory workshop uses a collective and embodied approach to investigate how medieval dances were composed and performed. Following a brief overview of the characteristics of dance found in medieval sources, we will identify what is missing: the strategies used to create those features. To fill the gaps in our knowledge, we will use an embodied form of historic-problem-solving. Participants will employ compositional and improvisational techniques derived from the poetic/musical structures of dance lyrics, descriptions of dancing and from treatises on poetry and music.

Workshop leader: Karen Miriam Silen, Independent Scholar