Welcome to the official web-site of "Anno Domini" project! In Latin Anno Domini means "after the birth of Christ.

"Anno Domini" is the festival of European historical dance, both court and traditional. Since 2006 the festival has been conducted in two stages: FTD (European traditional dances): February, 3rd - 5th and FHD (European historical court dances of 14th-15th centuries): April, 29th - May, 2nd.

Anyone can participate in the festival. The objective of Anno Domini is to re-introduce social dance, the legacy which was lost during wars and revolutions. It is not disco, sport or classical ballet, but a beautiful kind of art, which in its time anyone could practice, a special language, endless source of gracefulness, joy and flirt.

First of all, dance is celebration. People danced to celebrate and to express their emotions: joy, sorrow, reverence, tenderness or worship:

We want to give a revival to these kinds of dance - both gala and playful, finical and common. Everyone can dance, if he or she wants to. Not too many things give the same strength of emotions as is experienced by people galloping in farandole on a forest glade, dancing together not for an audience, but just for themselves, because they want to jump, skip and turn! (By the way, the verb "dance" is derived from the words like jump, skip or turn in different languages.)

Of course, during the times since the beginning of our age till 20th century people danced different dances. A ball room of Rococo age is different from chilling-through medieval castle as the dances of these ages are different from each other. Rural dances from Brueghel's pictures were much simpler than complicated acrobatic dances of jugglers and moresquers of that time.

We always try to introduce different genres at our festivals: court dances of Renaissance that nobility would dance for pleasure, and complicated compositions which were performed by skilled court dancers in Renaissance.

We learn with the same pleasure easy branles of 16th century and Chesary Negri's waltzes, all-European country dances and "elite" minuets of 18th century.

Besides, the skills of participants of the festival are different: someone devoted many years of hard work to historical dance, while someone saw these dances for the first time just a couple of weeks ago:

We are happy to work with anyone. We try to make the organization of the festival the most accomodating for all participants.

After the Fifth International Festival in 2005 the decision was made to establish the Association of Historical Dance. Any club or school, which study the history of dance, can join it. The purpose of the Association - to conduct master-classes and high level balls and in the meantime to attract more and more dancers. Due to that there is a certification system which enables to separate participants by levels - from beginners to virtuosos - and to conduct classes according to dancers' skills and abilities.

At FHD-6 dancers were split to "basic" (beginners), "common" (for everyone) and "advanced" levels. The levels can be different for each period - for example, a dancer who understands the artful designs of 16th century composition thoroughly, would not be as skilled in complicated hand positions of baroque age.

To participate in Anno Domini you need to fill out our application form and specify, which level do you wish to try in every historical epoch. Applications for FTD and FHD are to be filled out separately.

There are no age limits or limits in dancing skills, however, we have to limit the overall number of participants to 150. Groups for classes of advanced levels should not be bigger than 40 persons.

Should you have questions relating to the organization of the festival, performances, teaching, sponsorship, etc., please, do not hesitate to send them to nimven@elf.org.ru

Further information is available in LiveJournal community fst_anno_domini.

The festival is organized by Nastasya Belaya and the School of Historical Dance at SPbSU "Villanella".

Steering committee of Anno Domini: Nadezhda Biskoup, Ekaterina Titova, Ekaterina Aleksandrova, Olga Romanova, Vladimir Milevsky, Andrey Zlobin.

The festival is conducted under the auspices of Trade Union of Students and Post-graduates of Saint Petersburg State University and art center "Admiral".