MEDIEVAL DANCE

Some say there's no such thing as medieval dance! ... After more than 40 years of research into this fascinating subject, the time has come to share our discoveries and work with you. The theme is so vast that it was difficult to know how to approach it. I've decided to create a website that will give you access not only to my academic research, but also to all the discoveries I've made with the various collaborators and researchers who have crossed paths with medieval dance. All the works we have published to date are only a tiny part of the image we want to give you of medieval dance. This immense repertoire of over a thousand dances has come down to us, sometimes fragmentary, sometimes with great precision. We invite you to visit and recreate with us this dance register, whose concept is both close to and far removed from the dance forms we practice. Dance is an oral art form, and must be transmitted in this way. This is what we're aiming to achieve by visiting this repertoire together, while remaining as close as possible to what we know of medieval culture. The creation of the Morescarole troupe and my meeting with Xavier Terrasa and Christophe Deslignes have enabled us to make giant strides in researching and contextualizing medieval dance. Every book, every workshop, every show and every ball is an opportunity to delve back into the various sources gleaned over the years. This form of archaeo-choreography enables us to show you, to help you understand and to make your own these marvellous vestiges of dance from the 9th to the 15th century. Our aim: to bring medieval dance to life in our contemporary world, without losing sight of the precious sources bequeathed to us by the dancers of the Middle Ages.

Catherine Ingrassia