Connecticut Early Music Festival: Ensemble Origo – Saravanda! Dances of New Spain

Saturday, June 6 | 5:00 PM | Chester Meeting House, 4 Liberty Street, Chester
Ensemble Origo – Saravanda! Dances of New Spain
Tracing the origins of the sarabande and chaconne, Ensemble Origo explores the vibrant cross-cultural roots of these iconic Baroque dances, from New Spain’s indigenous and African communities to the European courts. A dancer joins the ensemble to demonstrate the 17th-century forms. A reception follows the concert. Tickets are $40 in advance ($45 at the door). $20 for under 40s. and FREE for students of any age.  For discounts on multiple concerts, please visit our website. 

Though the sarabande and the chaconne were stylized sections of courtly suites by Baroque composers such as Scarlatti and Bach, their origins are far removed from any European court, stemming instead from New Spain. In a book about the Spanish colony in 1579, a Dominican friar described the sarabande as a lascivious dance and identified it with the indigenous population. However, at least one surviving song — a villancico for Christmas — links it with enslaved Africans, suggesting that both populations were involved in the creation of the genre. A dancer joins the ensemble’s instrumentalists to demonstrate both of these 17-century courtly dances in relation to early dances from New Spain. The concert sketches the printing history of both genres (which were related at one time) from simple guitar strumming patterns to the stylized instrumental works adopted by hundreds of European composers in the centuries that followed. The program aims to bring what is known of the genres’ lost—or suppressed—histories to light, thus rethinking Eurocentric notions of these distinctive musical genres, their history, and their trajectory.