Dance Repertoire

OUR DANCE REPERTOIRE

Sleights: The first dance we learned. It is a traditional dance, originated in the town of Sleights in England. It is danced by every SF Bay Area longsword team and their great-aunt Martha. The version we do has been slightly revised from the traditional one. (For any longsword aficionados who might care: We link each figure with a spin-and-fan move, rather than breaking completely after the figures and starting each new figure with the basket clash, so the dance is continuous with no breaks in music or movement. We also cut out the Overs and Unders figure.) A six-person dance. This was the first dance we learned and we have fond memories of it, but the Nettles have begun writing our own dances, so we have removed this classic from our repertoire.

Five of Nettles: An original composition, created by Stinging Nettle Longsword. Five of Nettles originated as a variant of Sleights that could be done with five dancers (for those gigs and practice nights when we didn't have a six-person quorum). However, it has evolved over time into pretty much an entirely different and original dance, although longsword aficionados can probably recognize its Sleights origins if they look real hard. Also sometimes called "The Five-Person Dance," in deference to the many months we spent calling it that while we desperately tried to come up with a name we could all agree on. (See our home page vis a vis "informal consensus.") We are not proprietary about this dance, and would be delighted to teach it to any interested sword team.

Four-Person Dance: This was an ad-hoc dance we made up for an event at which we were seriously quorum-deprived. It was the first dance our team invented, and many of us think of it fondly for that reason; however, it's really not that great a dance (for one thing, we never did figure out how to make a lock with only four swords), and we only performed it the one time. It never got a name, but we sometimes refer to it as Element of Surprise, since that's the name we gave our ad-hoc team for the event where we danced it. Based on Sleights.

Sprockets: Now is the time on Sprockets when we dance! This is the first dance we wrote that's not an adaptation of any other sword dance (although it is influenced by other sword dances, as well as by Morris, English Country, military march formations, marching band formations, the motion of farm equipment, and whatever seemed cool at the time we were making it up). It's different from most traditional longsword dances in that most of the figures do not begin in a closed circle; instead, for most of the dance, the dancers start out in a cross or plus-sign configuration, switching places in an assortment of figures. Many of the figures have a look and feel that's reminiscent of machinery or clockworks; hence the name. Again, we are not proprietary about this dance, and would be delighted to teach it to any interested sword team. A five-person dance.

Wild Oats: We created yet another new dance, this time not based on anything but our fevered imaginations (well, and some Morris and English Country Dance figures we like). Many of the figures have a horse or horse-and-rider flavor to them: hence the name. A six-person dance.

Bryde of Entropie: Our most recent original dance, completed in August of 2005. A six-person dance in waltz time, with all-new music composed by our muso, Tim Walters. Dramatic and theatrical. The lock at the end is topologically impossible, but we manage it anyway.