Anno MCMXCVI
An early dance company
30 years together!
Festa Cortese is an early dance company active since 1996. Our journey began with a simple fascination with early Renaissance dance and the culture of that age. Today it is a mature ensemble uniting dance professionals and history enthusiasts, whose passion for the culture of old Europe has grown into the company's artistic style.
Over three decades we have created more than fifty historical dance programmes — a repertoire of English, Italian and French dances from the 14th to the 19th century. Our performances are grounded in authentic sources: early dance treatises, iconography and art-historical research, yet they always keep a creative eye and a contemporary sensibility.
Festa Cortese has taken part in the National Drama Theatre productions “Barbora Radvilaitė”, “King Vytautas” and “Donelaitis”; together with the Čiurlionis Quartet, laureates of the National Prize for Culture and Arts, we created the dance performance “The Women Loved by King Mindaugas”, and with the ensemble Musica Humana the theatrical concert “Dedication to Queen Barbora Radvilaitė”.
For more than a decade we have collaborated with the professional medieval music group Remdih (Czech Republic), with whom we prepared the programmes “16th-century French branles” and “Echo la primavera”. Our friends from Viduramziai.lt often join our performances, enriching them with elements of fire artistry — for example in the dance mystery “The Spells of the Hunt”.
Through dance and music we want history not to be told, but lived — in a space of experience where time begins to flow differently.
Our repertoire unfolds like a journey through the ages: from medieval rituals and Renaissance courts to baroque theatre and the world of later social dances.
This programme opens the world of 13th–15th-century European courts, monasteries and town squares, where dance, sacred music and ceremonial bearing were a single language of culture.
Alongside the estampie and saltarello sounds music reconstructed from manuscripts, and the performance is completed by short narrations on the origins of the dances, their symbolism and their place in medieval society.
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In the world of the Italian corte, dance becomes a form of etiquette, poetry and architectural movement. The programme invites you into a space where geometric choreographies meet courtly sensibility and Renaissance self-command.
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The branles are marked by a clear rhythm, collective energy and a festive spirit close to the audience. Lines, circles and unexpected pranks create the pulse of Renaissance town life.
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This programme is built around spectacle: the movement of feathers, stage bearing and the power of baroque representation. It is the world of French theatre, created as a radiant performance.
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Refined court steps and theatrical ornament are composed here into a single baroque tableau. The programme highlights restrained emotion, discipline of form and the splendour of the ceremonial of Versailles.
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The contredanses reveal dance as a social game in which courtly manners and public festivities draw close to one another. The rhythm of the music, the dynamics of the couples and a hidden intrigue become the performance's central tension.
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Medieval music group (Czech Republic)
Laureate of the National Prize for Culture and Arts
Early music ensemble
Early music ensemble
Cultural centre
Cultural organisation
Cultural heritage organisation
Historical combat club
We are a non-profit organisation. Your support helps us keep promoting the cultural values of old Europe.