Canconier March 9, 2013

CHOREOMANIA: Music for the Dancing Plagues of the Middle Ages and Renaissance

From fiery tarantellas to penitential prayers, music to appease divine wrath, or just the ultimate Dance Fever!

Canconier, an ensemble devoted to music from the Middle Ages to the Renaissance, will perform a fascinating program featuring instrumental and vocal dance music, flagellant songs, penitential prayers, tarantellas, and more.

Acclaimed multi-instrumentalist and Canconier co-founder Tim Rayborn explains the context for a program of music devoted to the so-called "dancing plague": "During the Middle Ages and Renaissance, certain areas experienced brief outbreaks of manic, 'contagious' dancing that often afflicted dozens, or even hundreds. Otherwise ordinary people would succumb to a compulsion to dance furiously for days or weeks on end, some to their deaths. Many feared that they had been cursed by saints, and perhaps gave in to mass hysteria; the true causes are still debated. Music was offered for the dancers in the hope that it would ease their suffering, or appease divine wrath."

Canconier:
Phoebe Jevtovic, voice; Shira Kammen, vielle & voice; Tim Rayborn, frame drum, hylsung, tabor, voice, citole & psaltery; Priscilla Smith; recorders, dulcian, bagpipe & voice; and Tom Zajac: pipe & tabor, bagpipe, sackbut, recorder, dulce melos, jaw harp, castanets & voice

Official Website: https://app.ticketturtle.com/index.php?show=28930