Eating and Dancing

I'm going to cheat this week, and make three posts out of what probably ought to be one (because it really was only one day).

Also, I'm severely lacking in personal photos on this one, so I apologize.

A few weeks ago was the College of Three Ravens again, and I managed to kill three birds with one stone, which was great.

I had two more classes to teach to round out my 10 New Classes Goal, and I had a few random ideas, but nothing really decided on for quite a while.

I finally narrowed it down to European Sword Dancing and Mongolian Food (and I'm going to post the class notes for both of those separately, hence the three posts).

Also, it turned out that Tsagaan Sar, the White Month, aka the Mongolian New Year also fell right on top of the College, and the event was also close to Shrovetide, when the Longsword Dances were originally danced, so both classes were surprisingly timely!

Now, as you may have realized by now, I am both an awesome procrastinator, and really bad at getting down to my research.

With Mongolian food, I was pretty sure I wouldn't be able to find any primary sources at all, but I had found some recipes online which were clearly from Mongolia, if modern, and fit the profile of what medieval Mongols would have had access to (which isn't much). I started my handout, and decided to include three recipes for the class, and then make a double batch for use at home in celebrating Tsagaan Sar ourselves (we aren't Mongolian, but our interest in their culture leads us to hold something of a cultural celebration every year).

Since making Mongolian cheese is pretty dependent on actually being in Mongolia (the lack of moisture is what makes it possible), I decided not to pursue it. Instead, I made Huushuur, which are Mongolian fried meat pies, Butter Tea, and my husband made Ul Boov, which are shoe-shaped pastries specifically associated with Tsagaan Sar.

On a whim, I decided to try to find mentions of food in the various European Medieval writings about the Mongols, by John Plano of Carpine and William of Rubruck. Both were monks visiting Mongolia to convert the locals, so they are not what you would call sympathetic to the culture, but it turns out that they were rather detailed about what they saw people eating, and what they were given to eat themselves.

Some things you have to take with a huge heaping tablespoon of salt (like the claims of cannibalism), but other things are really very fascinating, such as the evidence of how and when bread came into the Mongolian diet.

I had heard over the years of a book called A Soup for the Qan, which had been described to me as the only Mongolian Medieval cookbook, and a list of medical remedies, but was out of my price range and not available locally. It turned out, though, that I could find what I needed simply by looking it up on Amazon, and reading the preview! It was very exciting to see lists of what roots and fruit, nuts and greens were available to the Mongols, depending on where in Mongolia they were, and also what kinds of animals they hunted.

With these sources, I was able to fill out my hand out and also my class.

Next I focused on Sword Dancing.

I've been dancing English Longsword since I was a teenager, and when I started my own morris team some years ago, we briefly forayed into Rapper Dancing, which is related, but a lot different.
My first task was to figure out whether it was medieval at all, which, luckily, it is (I did at least find that out before deciding to teach the class)!

Next, I wanted to see whether English Longsword was medieval or just the European variety. They are pretty clearly close relations, but not exactly the same. It turns out that the English version is actually quite a bit after our period of study, probably 18th or 19th century, but several versions of the European Sword dances are dated back to the 14th century, which is firmly within our period.
At this point I needed to decide whether to try to learn a brand new version, or stick to what I knew, and inform the class of the differences.

I was starting to get excited about learning the Lange Wapper Sword Dance, which is from Belgium, and which I thought I might be able to learn relatively quickly from their youtube videos. I picked up the stepping, and then started thinking about whether I could reasonably expect to pull together a dozen dancers for this class...and whether it was reasonable to think that I could teach something I'd picked up off a youtube video without having actually danced the whole thing myself.

Then I found the website of Jeremy Carter-Gordon, who spent a year studying Longsword around the world, and blogged about it. It was a fascinating blog, and I thought, if anyone knows what historical sources there are out there, he's it. So I emailed him and asked.
He suggested both a few sources, and that I stick to teaching what I already knew (which was good advice).
He also pointed out that the Lange Wapper Dance is a revival, and the oldest continuous dance group was the Überlinger Schwerttanzkompanie. I found some video of them as well, but it was much harder to figure out what they were doing, so I decided to stick with the English in the end.

The next exciting thing was finding out that the main resource that Jeremy suggested was, in fact, held at a library very close to my job, which allowed me to just wander over on my lunch hour and take it out! I really hadn't expected that I'd be able to find a copy at all, never mind one so close.

The last bit was determining the set up and execution of the class. Another interesting quirk of timing: a large dance festival at which my former morris team was performing the sword dance I knew was the weekend before the event. I asked them for help, and so during a lull in the weekend just before they were heading off to perform, we ran through it so cement it in my head. They also were able to give a couple of pointers on teaching it. The following Monday, I bought 12 $1 yardsticks from Lowe's, and went to my current team's practice, where they also were kind enough to help me get ready. They had never done longsword before, so I taught them with the yardsticks as swords. The yardsticks were about 6" too long, and the corners and edges were on the sharp side, but they were basically usable.
My team were able to give me even more pointers, because as dancers, but not sword dancers, they were able to see ways in which I could better describe what was going on.
My next step was to provide music. Unfortunately, a few things conspired to make it impossible for me to record the music I needed before the day itself...

Luckily, the event was held very close to home, so I could run home between my classes and record music (of all the silly things to attempt). 

The first class, Mongolian Food, went very well. Some of the attendees were very knowledgeable, and could fill in gaps in my own research, and others had interesting questions. We all ate Huushuur (except one student who was gluten intolerant), and tried Ul Boov, and chatted about the interesting aspects of Mongolian Food, then and now.

Then I ran home, pulled out my accordion (yes, not period, but I don't have anything else), and after a few attempts, recorded what I needed. I pulled some videos of sword dancing onto a thumb drive so that I could play them without an internet connection, and headed back out.

The second class was a little crazier. I had four students, which brought our total to less than six. Then, I was using an unfamiliar laptop, and it turned out that one of the videos, the one I wanted to start the class, was no on the thumb drive after all! 
I skipped that part, and started with the discussion and the method, and then we pulled another guy out of the hall when it became evident that you simply can't do Double-Over with 5 people. He was kind enough to risk being hit in the head with a wooden stick to help us get through the walk through!
My husband appeared at last, and fixed my laptop problems, and then we watched a few of the videos, and ended up the class with a dance-through. I recruited my husband this time, and he did beautifully, given that he'd missed the walk-through.

All in all, both classes went quite well, but I think more attention to detail in the preparation would have been a good idea.
I might yet teach them both again, especially the sword class. That was fun!