Josias Priest (''c.'' 1645 – April 1734 or 3 January 1735 in
Chelsea, London
Chelsea is an area in West London, England, due south-west of Kilometre zero#Great Britain, Charing Cross by approximately . It lies on the north bank of the River Thames and for postal purposes is part of the SW postcode area, south-western p ...
) was an
English
English usually refers to:
* English language
* English people
English may also refer to:
Culture, language and peoples
* ''English'', an adjective for something of, from, or related to England
* ''English'', an Amish ter ...
dancer, dancing-master and
choreographer
Choreography is the art of designing sequences of movements of physical bodies (or their depictions) in which Motion (physics), motion or Visual appearance, form or both are specified. ''Choreography'' may also refer to the design itself. A chor ...
.
Biography
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 ), an area in central London, covers the south-eastern part of the London Borough of Camden and a part (St Andrew Holborn (parish), St Andrew Holborn Below the Bars) of the Wards of the City of London, Ward of Farringdon Without i ...
, and in 1675 he moved to
Leicester Fields
Leicester Square ( ) is a pedestrianised square in the West End of London, England, and is the centre of London's entertainment district. It was laid out in 1670 as Leicester Fields, which was named after the recently built Leicester House, ...
to run a
boarding school
A boarding school is a school where pupils live within premises while being given formal instruction. The word "boarding" is used in the sense of "room and board", i.e. lodging and meals. They have existed for many centuries, and now extend acr ...
for gentlewomen. In 1680 he started a similar school at Gorge's House in
Chelsea, London
Chelsea is an area in West London, England, due south-west of Kilometre zero#Great Britain, Charing Cross by approximately . It lies on the north bank of the River Thames and for postal purposes is part of the SW postcode area, south-western p ...
which stood just behind what is now Lindsey Row, between Beaufort Street and Milman's Row. Here Priest hosted
opera
Opera is a form of History of theatre#European theatre, Western theatre in which music is a fundamental component and dramatic roles are taken by Singing, singers. Such a "work" (the literal translation of the Italian word "opera") is typically ...
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
Henry Purcell (, rare: ; September 1659 – 21 November 1695) was an English composer of Baroque music, most remembered for his more than 100 songs; a tragic opera, Dido and Aeneas, ''Dido and Aeneas''; and his incidental music to a version o ...
's ''
Dido and Aeneas
''Dido and Aeneas'' (Z. 626) is an opera in a prologue and three acts, written by the English Baroque music, Baroque composer Henry Purcell with a libretto by Nahum Tate. The dates of the composition and first performance of the opera are uncer ...
'' (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 in ...
King Arthur
According to legends, King Arthur (; ; ; ) was a king of Great Britain, Britain. He is a folk hero and a central figure in the medieval literary tradition known as the Matter of Britain.
In Wales, Welsh sources, Arthur is portrayed as a le ...
'' ; however, the evidence is not entirely conclusive.
In 1699
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 USPG, Society for the Pr ...
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
Pierre Beaucha ...
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 England in the British Isles; it is the repeated execution of a predefined sequence of figures, carefully designed to fit a fixed length of music, perfo ...
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 a research library in Washington, D.C., serving as the library and research service fo ...
.
Notes and references
Bibliography
*Jennifer Thorp. "Josias Priest", ''
Grove Music Online
''The New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians'' is an encyclopedic dictionary of music and musicians. Along with the German-language '' Die Musik in Geschichte und Gegenwart'', it is one of the largest reference works on the history and t ...