Let’s dance !

The art of dance in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries

Highly stylised, formal and solemn: this is how we generally imagine early dances. But this concert dansé will show you what dances were really like in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries!

Omnipresent at court festivities, they were elegant, refined and aristocratic, becoming spectacular and virtuosic, theatrical and allegorical, when performed in the sumptuous intermèdes of princely celebrations.

Including the basses danses and balli of the fifteenth-century Burgundian court, the pavanes, gaillardes, allemandes and tourdions of the French court, and dances such as the canario, follia and spagnoletta of the courts of Italy, this programme will come as a surprise, such is its diversity, inventiveness, and even its madness – for madmen are known to have danced the moresca! The talented soprano Camille Fritsch will interpret delicious French Renaissance chansons.

As in the past, the dances will be accompanied by a wind band, the piffari, corresponding to the English town waits, with instrumentalists who can switch with ease from hauts (“loud”) instruments, such as shawms and oboes, to bas (“soft”) instruments, including flutes and bassoons, of all of which the musicians of Doulce Mémoire have a perfect command.

Hubert Hazebroucq is regularly invited, as a choreographer and dancer, to take part in the major European festivals, and he also works as an independent researcher with various universities. In this concert dansé he shows us what Renaissance dance was like at its highest

level. An essential art form, Renaissance dance must now find its rightful place in programmes of early music.

After the success of our show entitled Royal festivities at the French court (Magnificences à la cour de France), Doulce Mémoire and Hubert Hazebroucq are back together again for a new joint programme, which is sure to be a delight to watch and hear!