While the most conventional sequence of “tours” or “changes” of the French contredanse is well-known and has been discussed and taught at length from at least the publication of La Contredanse by Jean-Michel Guilcher more than fifty years ago, extensive re-examination of published contredanses suggests that in the case of the opening “change”, Le Grand Rond or Le Rond Ordinaire, the conventional assumptions fail to account for both variations in performance and substantial choreographic creativity on the part of French dancing masters.
This paper will first review the standard sequence of changes and the performance variations of Le Grand Rond and then provide a detailed survey of the more extraordinary opening “changes” found in French choreography of the second half of the 18th century.
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Susan de Guardiola (BA, Yale; MSEd, University of New Haven) is an independent scholar in social dance history with thirty years of experience in a wide variety of modern and historical social dance forms from the sixteenth through the early twentieth centuries. She has presented her work at conferences including the Dolmetsch Historical Dance Society Conference, the International Congress for Medieval Studies, and Stanford University Historical Dance Week. In 2013-2014 she conducted research at Harvard University as a New England Regional Fellow. Her particular interests include improvisation in social dance, the evolution of the ballroom repertoire over the course of the late eighteenth to nineteenth centuries, and the development of American social dance from its European origins. Her teaching focuses on exploring and recreating both the skill sets and mindsets of the social dancers of the past. She publishes brief dance reconstructions and research excerpts online at Capering & Kickery (http:// www.kickery.com).