Much Ado About Shakespeare's 450th Birthday

Shakespeare was born on April 26, 1564 in Stratford upon Avon. His 450th birthday will be celebrated internationally with exhibitions, conferences, and performances of his plays.

The Folger Library in Washington D.C., which hold the largest collection of Shakespeare's works, will showing a first folio of the Bard's plays. In Paris, a week-long conference will be held for scholars, stage directors, and actors. Britain will be hosting "Shakespeare Week" in March, along with more than 1000 schools, drama theaters, and museums. And of course, the book publishers are right in the thick of things with a mountain of Shakespeare-themed books.

The coolest book, in my opinion, is by Dan Falk, a Canadian Science journalist. His book The Science of Shakespeare is to be released early next year. In it, he salutes both Galileo's (b. February 15, 1564) and Shakespeare's 450th birthdays and how each influenced the other.

Regency Dances with Video Action Depicting Steps

I found this marvelous site recently that has videos showing how the various dances of the Regency period were danced. With animated figures, the graphics are basic, but very clear on who's moving and where they're moving to. Have a look at Regency Dances .org! (These are the dances demonstrated on the site.)

Regency dancing is characterised by an impression of lightness and lift, contrasting with the more stylised court dances of earlier times that were slow, heavy, and majestic.

The basics of the steps are as follows:
1. A hop is taking off on one foot and landing on the same foot.
2. A jeté is a leap from one foot onto the other.
3. An assemblé is a leap from one foot onto both.
4. When the foot is off the floor, the toes have to be pointed.
5. Any kind of leaps and hops requires toe landing with the heel then sinking quietly to the floor.

In addition to the above, various different steps are described here with links to videos demonstrating the individual steps (by a person wearing period-perfect clothing): chassé, allemande, drop, waltz traveling, fleuret or bouré, plié, strathspey traveling, balancé, schottishe, rigadon, and so on.

In his 1815 Essay on Deportment dancing master Thomas Wilson offers this advice to dancers on which errors to avoid:

•Making awkward bows
•Shuffling and rattling about the feet
•Looking at the feet
•Bending [sharply] the arm at the elbow, in giving the hand in Dancing
•Holding the hands of any person too fast
•Bending down the hands of your partner
•Bouncing the hands up and down
•Bending the body forward.

Given the complicated dance figures and number of things to remember to do and not to do, I live in fear of ever learning to dance even one dance correctly by heart. Having said that, I did manage to not mangle the steps too badly at the Beau Monde Soirée, I attended one summer. I was wearing my proper Regency regalia, mais oui.

Regency Dance Music Kickstarter

A project after my own heart. The 200 Dances Project is looking for seed money to "create historically accurate recordings of the music for 200 carefully researched dances from the English Regency Period."

The music will come out on sixteen CDs spaced out over a few months and will also be available for individual MP3 downloads. The music will be performed by concert musicians experienced in early music, on period instruments, and in ensembles that would've been found at Assemblies 200 years ago.

The project owners, from Winchester, England, also run Regency Dance, an educational website that specializes in detailed information on dances from the Regency era. Visit the website to vote for your favorite dances from the list. Of those, 200 will be chosen for this project.

Most Complete Georgian Playhouse of Britain

Georgian Theatre Royal in Richmond, North Yorkshire is the most complete Georgian playhouse in Britain today.

It was built by actor-manager Samuel Butler in 1788. In its heyday, the 200-seat theater hosted figures from Georgian star Edmund Kean to Dame Sybil Thorndike, Joyce Grenfell, and Alan Bennett.

The theater is still in its original form today with its original boxes, furnishings, stage, box office, and other features. One of them includes kicking boards, which audiences would use to make their disapproval heard.

The theater was closed in 1848, reopened in 1963, and restored and extended 2003. However, only restoration work has been done on the building: no refits; thereby retaining everything the way it was when it was built. However, further restoration works still needs to be done, and so the theater is launching a fundraising campaign to save it from closure.

These days, in addition to a regular bill of plays, music concerts, and talks, the playhouse also houses a 180-member youth theater.

One of the one-person character plays currently playing is vignettes from the Georgian era's most beloved writers: Jane Austen. In Austen's Women, "thirteen of Jane Austen's most celebrated female characters are brought to life in this bold revisiting of scenes of high comedy and moments of pathos." Using only Austen's words, Austen's Women offers a distillation of 19th century feminism.