Siebensprung
An Alpine circle dance of seven successive figures, still danced today.
What it means
The Siebensprung (“seven jumps”) is an old folk dance of the Alpine region and neighboring areas, made up of seven successive figures. The dancers perform them one after another, usually to the same melody, with each repetition adding a further movement.
It is still danced today at folk festivals and by costume and folk-dance groups, often in a sociable, playful spirit.
Musical use
The dance’s origin is not precisely established; older reference works saw in it a very ancient, possibly pre-Christian harvest dance. Such a derivation is a nineteenth-century interpretation and cannot be reliably documented. What is certain is that the dance was handed down in Bavaria, Austria, and neighboring areas and exists in several regional versions.
Musically, a short, memorable melody carries the sequence, played by small folk ensembles. The figures themselves are not the same everywhere, so descriptions of the individual jumps differ by region.
The Siebensprung should be distinguished from the Ländler, a couple dance in triple meter, and from the round dance, in which dancers move in a circle; the Siebensprung is instead defined by its fixed sequence of seven figures.
Performance practice
When learning the Siebensprung, memorize the order of the figures and practice them one by one before combining them with the melody. If you play the music, keep the tempo steady so the dancers have time for the new figure on each repetition.