Saravanda! Dances of New Spain

Tracing the African and Mesoamerican Origins of the Sarabande and the Chaconne

 

Thursday, October 9, 2025 – 8 pm

von der Mehden Recital Hall

875 Coventry Road

Storrs, Connecticut  06269 

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For tickets, click here.

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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. This program, which is related to one Ensemble Origo presented in 2023, a dancer joins the ensemble’s instrumentalists to demonstrate both the seventeenth-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.​​​