To register for the Dances of Bridgerton class on September 29, 2024, in Middletown, Connecticut, please click here.
Dearest Gentle Reader,
Welcome to the world of Bridgerton dance! Choreographer Jack Murphy's dances from Bridgerton and Queen Charlotte are an interesting mix of historically inspired and modern movements with a distinct style of their own that is as characteristic of the Bridgerton alternate-history as the classical interpretations of modern music often used in the series. Working from video clips of the show, I have done my best to reconstruct several of these dances and am excited to teach fans of the show how to dance like Bridgerton! Please contact me if you are interested in a workshop in these dances or a Bridgerton-themed ball!
Here are the Bridgerton dances I am currently available to teach:
The "Harmony" circle mixer (Bridgerton, Season Two)
This dance for a circle of couples rapidly turns into a chaotic mixer with the dancers changing partners each time through. It even allows for an extra dancer and a trio in the mix, as shown in the photo at right! This is an exceptionally easy dance, without the intense partner focus of the couple dances, and great fun for large groups. The the music is a very modern-style jig composed for the show.
Click here to watch the dance as shown in Season Two of Bridgerton.
Is the style of the dance accurate to 1813? Not really. Though circle mixers and chaotic mixers did exist (more in France than in England, and not quite that chaotic) the problem here is that the dance incorporates eight bars of buzz swing for each time through, and that's a figure that didn't come in until sometime in the late nineteenth or early twentieth century. I wrote some very geeky dance historian thoughts on it a while back. We can presume that in alternate-history Bridgerton England, the buzz swing evolved earlier and mixers were a bit more chaotic.
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Simon and Daphne's falling-in-love dance (Bridgerton, Season One)
This is a medium-difficulty dance performed independently by each couple and danced to the Bridgerton main theme music composed by Kris Bowers. It's not physically difficult, and the sequence is made up mostly of very easy movements, so it's fairly beginner-friendly.
Click here to watch the dance as performed on Season One of Bridgerton.
There's no real model for this dance in the 1810s. It starts with simple moves like forward-and-back and dos-à-dos that would fit better into a country dance or quadrille than into a couple dance, then incorporates some elements of the allemande, with an underarm-turn-and-change-places move (a sort of reversed version of the square/contra dance move "swat the flea") that is one of Murphy's choreographic tics, and some cuddled-up courtesy turns...if only the dancers would stop bouncing apart in between! The dancers also walk through much of this dance, which is not a particularly period way to move. It does make the dance very accessible to people who are not experienced dancers!
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Colin and Penelope's dance (Bridgerton, Season Three)
This is another couple dance, but this time it's a processional: the couples don't dance in one place, they move around the room while dancing! It has a sequence that is shorter but a more complicated than Simon and Daphne's dance above. The music is a modern piece in triple time that feels like a cross between a waltz and a slip jig (9/8). The characters definitely don't waltz to it!
Click here to watch the dance as performed on Bridgerton, Season Three.
The dance starts out very much like Simon and Daphne's dance, with more simple forward-and-backs and turns that feel odd (from a historical perspective) in a couple dance. But then it shifts into processional mode and starts incorporating more of the twiddly arm twists and turns characteristic of allemandes. I give the dancers credit for, at times, even using something like an allemande step. Apparently in the Bridgerton timeline allemande(ish) stayed in style much longer!
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I plan to add more dances as I have time to work through and reconstruct them, so check back for new additions!
Note: I will not be publishing instructions for any Bridgerton choreographies, since they are Jack Murphy's work, and it is for him to publish or not publish them.
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Upcoming Dances of Bridgerton class:
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