The Early Dance and Music Project,
directed by Rachelle Palnick Tsachor, with Ruth Williams as music director,
practices the art of courtship, love and intrigue as experienced in the
courtly ballrooms of the 15th - 19th centuries.
The Early Dance Project was formed in
2003, and has performed at the
Renaissance Festival,
University of Northern Iowa, and at public schools in
Iowa along with early music performers from our area.
Recent programs were based upon
reconstructed social dances from the dancing manuals of Fabritio Caroso's
Nobilt・di Dame (1600) and Il Ballarino (1580) , Thoinot Arbeau's
Orchesography (1589) and Cesare Negri's Le Gratie d'Amore
(1602), John Playford's English Dancing Master (1651), and the
Baroque manuals of Louis
Pécour, Raoul Auger Feuillet (1700) and Andr・Lorin
(c. 1686).
Early Dance Project is sponsored by
Arts a la Carte, a not-for-profit organization in
Iowa City supporting the Movement Arts
http://www.artsalacarteic.org/,
which provides rehearsal space for the company. Our group is
inter-generational and welcomes new participants of all ages and
abilities. We are often joined by the English Country Dance Society of
Iowa City, which is coordinated by Barbara Zilles, and local
musicians interested in learning and performing early music.
Early Dance Project director Rachelle
Palnick Tsachor earned her BFA in Dance at the Juilliard School and her
Masters of Dance Research and Reconstruction at the City College of
New York, where she studied Renaissance dance with Dr. Julia Sutton
and Baroque dance with Wendy Hilton. She has taught period Movement and
dance at the
University of Iowa, where she is currently faculty at the School of
Music. Tsachor has staged dances for the UI Madrigal Dinners for 10 years,
the
University of Iowa Theatres and Riverside Theatre in
Iowa City. She as been invited to give presentations on Early Dance
at the International Conference of Early Dance in
Ghent, Belgium, the Society for Dance History Scholars, The
Association of Theatre in Higher Education, the Association of Theatre
Movement Educators, and the Laban Institute of Movement Studies. Tsachor is
currently serving as managing editor for the forthcoming scholarly edition
of Andr・Lorin's late 1680's manuscript of Country Dances, which was
commissioned by
Louis XIV. Tsachor was a major consultant to the video "How to Dance
through Time: The Majesty of Renaissance Dance."
For information about the English
Country Dance Society of
Iowa City and International Folk Dance in
Iowa City, please contact Barbara at
Barbara-Zilles@uiowa.edu.
