ITALIAN COUNTRY BEST DANCERS

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BEST ITALIAN DANCERS PROFILES :
Italian dance of the 15th century is the worthy our study and performing in the SCA for several reasons. First, these dances called ballet and bassa dance are some of the earliest surviving dances we possess. They come down to us through 12 surviving manuscripts which identify four major authors as their source.

These authors, Domenico da Piacenza, Guglielmo Ebreo, Giovanni Ambrosio, and Antonio Cornazano give us specific tabulations of these dances, a good dose of theory about how to dance these dances, and in the case of most balleti, music to go along with the dances. All of these treatises date from later half of the fifteenth century, and, for comparison purposes are over one hundred years older than Arbeau's Orchesography, where we get most of our information on dances such as branles, pavans and galliards, etc.

Bassa danza is a slow, stately dance form, elegant in style, which accentuates partner interaction and can sometimes be considered processional1. It is usually reconstructed with either 3 or 6 beats per measure, which can require an adjustment for the average SCA dancer used to dancing in four beats per measure. The bassa danza Lauro is included at the end of this article as an example of bassa danza as an independent dance form. And well over one hundred fifty years older than John Playford's first edition of The Dancing Master, our primary source for English Country Dance.

Best Italian Dancers