Chelsea, London
Chelsea is an affluent area in west London, England, due south-west of Charing Cross by approximately 2.5 miles. It lies on the north bank of the River Thames and for postal purposes is part of the south-western postal area.
Chelsea histori ...
) was an
English
English usually refers to:
* English language
* English people
English may also refer to:
Peoples, culture, and language
* ''English'', an adjective for something of, from, or related to England
** English national ide ...
In 1669, Priest was arrested along with four others for dancing and making music without a license. In 1668, he was a dancing-master in
Holborn
Holborn ( or ) is a district in central London, which covers the south-eastern part of the London Borough of Camden and a part ( St Andrew Holborn Below the Bars) of the Ward of Farringdon Without in the City of London.
The area has its root ...
, and in 1675 he moved to
Leicester Fields
Leicester Square ( ) is a pedestrianised square in the West End of London, England. It was laid out in 1670 as Leicester Fields, which was named after the recently built Leicester House, itself named after Robert Sidney, 2nd Earl of Leicest ...
Chelsea, London
Chelsea is an affluent area in west London, England, due south-west of Charing Cross by approximately 2.5 miles. It lies on the north bank of the River Thames and for postal purposes is part of the south-western postal area.
Chelsea histori ...
. Here Priest hosted
opera
Opera is a form of theatre in which music is a fundamental component and dramatic roles are taken by singers. Such a "work" (the literal translation of the Italian word "opera") is typically a collaboration between a composer and a libr ...
s, including
John Blow
John Blow (baptised 23 February 1649 – 1 October 1708) was an English composer and organist of the Baroque period. Appointed organist of Westminster Abbey in late 1668,Venus and Adonis'' (1684) and Henry Purcell's ''
Dido and Aeneas
''Dido and Aeneas'' (Z. 626) is an opera in a prologue and three acts, written by the English Baroque composer Henry Purcell with a libretto by Nahum Tate. The dates of the composition and first performance of the opera are uncertain. It was com ...
'' (1689). It is widely believed that Priest choreographed dances for these and other semi-operas by Purcell, including ''
Dioclesian
''Dioclesian'' (''The Prophetess: or, The History of Dioclesian'') is an English tragicomic semi-opera in five acts by Henry Purcell to a libretto by Thomas Betterton based on the play '' The Prophetess'', by John Fletcher and Philip Massinger, ...
'', ''
The Fairy-Queen
''The Fairy-Queen'' (1692; Purcell catalogue number Z.629) is a semi-opera by Henry Purcell; a "Restoration spectacular". The libretto is an anonymous adaptation of William Shakespeare's comedy ''A Midsummer Night's Dream''. First performed ...
Thomas Bray
Thomas Bray (1656 or 165815 February 1730) was an English clergyman and abolitionist who helped formally establish the Church of England in Maryland, as well as the Society for the Propagation of Christian Knowledge and Society for the Propa ...
published a collection of dance music which included music for dances by Josias Priest and his son, Thomas Priest. Only one dance by Priest survives, a 'Minuet by Mr Preist' in ''An Essay for the Further Improvement of Dancing'' (1711) published by Edmund Pemberton. References to Priest's choreography remain in some musical sources, however. The surviving minuet is for twelve women and uses a limited step vocabulary of
minuet step The minuet step is the dance step performed in the dance minuet. It "is composed of four plain straight Steps or Walks, and may be performed forwards, backward, sideways, &c." or in a square. The steps are often referred to by direction to distingu ...
s forwards, backwards and sideways, the main choreographic interest being in the floor patterns. It is recorded in a simplified form of
Beauchamp–Feuillet notation
Beauchamp–Feuillet notation is a system of dance notation used in Baroque dance.
The notation was commissioned by Louis XIV (who had founded the Académie Royale de Danse in 1661), and devised in the 1680s by Pierre Beauchamp. The notatio ...
that was typically used for recording
English country dance
A country dance is any of a very large number of social dances of a type that originated in the British Isles; it is the repeated execution of a predefined sequence of figures, carefully designed to fit a fixed length of music, performed by a g ...
An American Ballroom Companion An American Ballroom Companion is an online collection of over two hundred social dance manuals at the Library of Congress
The Library of Congress (LOC) is the research library that officially serves the United States Congress and is the ''d ...