Renaat van Craenenbroeck, 1937-2001

Abstract

On 6 July 2001, Renaat van Craenenbroeck died suddenly and unexpectedly, during a dance performance at a festival in Croatia. This was a profound shock to the international sword dance community. Born in 1937 in Antwerp, Belgium, he still had plans to continue dancing, teaching and researching in the field of sword dance. His travel plans always included investigating, and encouraging the performance of, sword dances throughout Europe. Others, including his friend and colleague, Trevor Stone (editor and publisher of Rattle Up, My Boys: A Quarterly Publication for Those with an Interest in Sword Dancing), have, in recent months, described his great contributions as a teacher, choreographer and performer. I would like to write about another role in which Renaat made very important contributions: as a historical researcher and author. When serious research on the history of sword dancing in Europe began in the latter part of the nineteenth century, it was quickly established that many of the earliest documentary records could be found in the archives of the cities and towns of the Low Countries. Historic Flanders (provinces which make up, roughly, present-day northern Belgium, southern Netherlands, and a slice of extreme northern France) was particularly rich in evidence. Large numbers of documentary references were found and published in such compilations as Frans de Potter and Jan Broeckaert, Geschiedenis van de gemeenten der provincie Oost-Vlaanderen (1860-1904), and Edmond van der Straeten, Le theatre villageois en Flandre (1881). references typically are short on details of the performances, but nonetheless include important information on payments, occasions and performers. These documents, dating from the late fourteenth century until the outbreak of the Low Countries' wars with Spain in the mid-sixteenth century, have been cited by a number of writers, from Britain and Germany as well as the Low Countries, but have received relatively little in-depth examination. Renaat began dancing in the Flemish folk dance movement in the 1950s. In 1970, he became a founding member (and choreographer) of a new, Antwerp-based sword dance group: Lange Wapper (the name comes from a character in local tales). In the dance, music, costuming and type of sword for this group, he drew on a wide range of material, including Flemish music, the history of sword dancing in Flanders (including one of the earliest pictures, by Antwerp artist Pieter Bruegel the Elder, The Fair of St George's Day, dated to c. 1560), dance swords from the museum in the town of Tongeren, and other evidence. In the process, he became fascinated with the early history of sword dancing in Flanders and elsewhere in Europe. He soon began investigating the early records of sword dances in Flanders. …