More than two-dozen anxious dancers showed up to take part in the Medieval Dancing Workshop held at Busker Browne’s Hall on Saturday.
It was part of this year’s Early Music Festival in Galway. Leader Lise Carrel was honest in telling her class they were all about to hear how much no one actually knows about medieval dancing.
“We have to guess from sculptures and paintings and from pictures showing people’s feet in the same position or how they hold hands or even how their legs sweep one way or the other,” she says.
Originally Lise Carrel is from France, but for 13-years she has made Galway her home. She and her husband, Jacopo Bisagni, who is from Italy, have spent that time learning about Medieval Dance and the instruments used back then. In fact, Jacopo accompanies the workshops with replicas of musettes, bagpipes and flutes.
She taught them the basic steps and then led them through circle dances, arches, spirals and bridges all believed to be parts of medieval and renaissance dances.
She even spiced it up with cow-kicks, heeltaps and turns.
