Segal, Barbara. "“Country Dance” as Reification of the Pastoral Idyll."

Segal, Barbara. "“Country Dance” as Reification of the Pastoral Idyll." In Retrieving & Reconstructing the Past through Dance [Proceedings of the Early Dance Circle Conference held on 6-8 May 2022], edited by Barbara Segal and Alena Shmakova, 21-34. Cambridge: Early Dance Circle, 2023.


Abstract:
"we are Frolyke heare in cowrte: much dauncing of contrey dawnces before the QM [Queen Elizabeth] Whoe is exceedingly pleased therwith." Thus said the Earl of Worcester to Sir Robert Sidney 1602.
This would seem to run counter to the views of many that the country dances were done by country folk, and in particular the rural labouring classes, presumably on their local village green on days of celebration, or Holy-Days.
But why would dances associated with the rustic peasantry be merrily danced at a court that was as class conscious as that of Queen Elizabeth? Was it the strong influence of the pastoral aesthetic in Tudor England that encouraged the upper classes to indulge in supposedly "rustic" behaviour? Remember that in France in the mid-16th century, Catherine de Médicis built a dairy, La Vacherie, where courtiers played at being shepherds and shepherdesses, while in the late 17th century in England, Queen Mary had a dairy built at Hampton Court, of course equipped with the finest Delft milking pans.
My paper questions the belief that these dances originated on the village green, or that they were in any way associated with the rural labouring classes. It will explore the role of the "country dance" as it emerged in parallel with the ‘pastoral aesthetic’ within the courts of Europe – and England in particular — during the Early Modern period.