In Hoedowns, Reels, and Frolics, old-time musician and flatfoot dancer Philip Jamison journeys into the past and surveys the present to tell the story behind the square dances, step dances, reels, and other forms of dance practiced in southern Appalachia. These distinctive folk dances, Jamison argues, are not the unaltered jigs and reels brought by early British settlers, but hybrids that developed over time by adopting and incorporating elements from other popular forms. He traces the forms from their European, African American, and Native American roots to the modern day. On the way he explores the powerful influence of black culture, showing how practices such as calling dances as well as specific kinds of steps combined with white European forms to create distinctly "American" dances. From cakewalks to clogging, and from the Shoo-fly Swing to the Virginia Reel, Hoedowns, Reels, and Frolics reinterprets an essential aspect of Appalachian culture.

This complete scholarly edition of the collection of manuscript choreographies from c.1565-c.1675 associated with the Inns of Court is the first full-length study of these sources to be published. It offers practical reconstructions of the dances and provides a selection of musical settings simply but idiomatically arranged for four-part instrumental ensemble or keyboard. ? Part One centres on the manuscript sources which transmit the Almain, and on the trends and influences that shaped its evolution in Britain from c. 1549 to c. 1675, taking account of both music and choreography.? In viewing the Almain within its broader historical context, Ian Payne throws new light on the dance, arguing that, together with the ?measures? which accompany it in the choreographies, it owes an even greater debt to the English country dance than has hitherto been acknowledged, a popular style that received its fullest expression in Playford's English Dancing Master of 1651. ? The second part of the book focuses on the dances themselves. The steps are described in detail and reconstructions provided for the nine Almains and some of the other measures included in the manuscripts. Part Three comprises a complete critical edition of the manuscripts. ? These easily performable versions of the dances will be an invaluable aid to those wishing to learn the dances, reconstruct them for stagings of Shakespeare's plays or Jacobean masques, and for dance historians.