What is English Country Dancing and Music? You've never heard of it? Yet, if you've seen Pride and Prejudice, Sense and Sensibility or Emma, you are indeed familiar with it!

While this traditional form of dance has been around for several hundred years, and evolved into square and contra dancing, it still thrives today in its own right. English Country Dancing (ECD) is done all over the US, Canada, England and on the Continent.

What makes people to love ECD so much is the hauntingly beautiful tunes that make the heart swell. Some come from old ballads and political satire, others come from classical music and opera. This gives ECD tremendous variety, sometimes sweet and melodic, sometimes melancholy, sometimes driven with a pulsating beat.

Others love ECD for the grace and elegance with which you move as you dance. At times, dancers are simply swept away as they become one with the music. Many people love the beautiful patterns that are created as they dance and weave. Popular in villages and courts in the 17th and 18th centuries, ECD is similar in many ways to its descendents contra and square dance, but more graceful, elegant and playful.

Typically, the dances are called but in the more experienced groups, the dances are memorized and done with minimal or no calling. Each tune has a specific dance that goes with it, so you can travel city to city, recognize a tune and know what’s expected of you.Ê For the musicians, the melody lines are written out, but they’re free to improvise extensively.

In the 1600s, hundreds of dances tunes were published and circulated as The Playford Dancing Masters. But the dances and tunes had been forgotten in England by the latter part of the 19th century. Fortunately, Cecil Sharp, a British musicologist, discovered that that both had been preserved for nearly 200 years by the hill folk of Appalachia. He traveled throughout Appalachia, painstakingly recording them, and contributed greatly to their preservation and resurrection of their popularity around the world. Playford dances continue to be reconstructed by country dance experts, like Jacqueline Schwab, featured pianist on many of Ken Burn’s PBS documentaries.

Today, ECD is kept alive within dance groups all over the country, at camps like Pinewoods on Cape Cod, and the art form continues to evolve as new choreographers and composers add to the repertoire.

We're fortunate in this area to have live music for English Country Dance classes. The musicians are Julian Shepherd, cello, Lee Shepherd, violin, Cheryl Spiese, flute and percussion, and Charlene Thomson, piano and accordion. Collectively, they are called Fine Companions. The ensemble regularly plays for dances in Binghamton, Ithaca and Syracuse but also have been enjoyed for their music alone in venues such at the Cranberry Coffeehouse, Barnes & Noble Storyteller's Night, Salt Springs' Arts in the Park and Roberson Museum's Home for the Holidays celebration.

If you're interested in taking English Country Dance classes, call Julian or Lee Shepherd at 607-722-9327.

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