I seem to remember us discussing the history of dance once before, although possibly it was related to something else. Anyway I've just come across this 3-part series ... Lucy Worsley and Len Goodman looking at the history of dance in Britain.



It's all quite light stuff but I found it very interesting with lots of fascinating little details such that the minuet was often danced as an individual couple with everyone else looking on, judging you and probably making snide comments ... or that a bodice being "straight-laced"  as opposed to "cross-laced" was more decorous as a cross-laced one was easier to get undone and so was associated with prostitutes ... or that a back-laced corset was a status symbol as it needed a servant to do up.

I've only watched the first one so far but here are numbers 2 and 3 ... I just hope they don't get taken down too quickly.

Lucy Worsley's Dancing Cheek to Cheek 2 - Revolution on the Dance Floor


Lucy Worsley's Dancing Cheek to Cheek 3 - The Shock of the New

Oh, brilliant! Thank you, MM!

I've just watched episode 2 ... some interesting comments there, re the waltz, about how ballgown fashion and the dance itself co-evolved so that changes in one initiated changes in the other.

Although I wish they'd started 100 years earlier in mid-16th century, with court dances like the pavanne, gaillard, saraband, and Queen Elizabeth's favourite, la volta ... I reckon Lucy Worsley would have made a good Queen Bess.

Meles meles wrote:

Although I wish they'd started 100 years earlier in mid-16th century, with court dances like the pavanne, gaillard, saraband, and Queen Elizabeth's favourite, la Volta.

Yes, I wonder how accurate the choreography of this is? I'd love to have a go at the Volta - even at my age! The lifts must have been very difficult to get right - looks easy, but done badly the whole sequence would look ridiculous rather than stately and dramatic.




You might enjoy this YouTube, MM - it's Medieval Music Hardcore Party Mix - interesting that it's had over three million views. I love it, but have absolutely no idea what the choreography of any of the dances would have been back then. The Master of the Revels would be in charge at Court, I suppose, but then again did his role only come later - in Tudor times?



I think if I were young again I should like to combine my love of history with my love of dance - the History of Dance, at Court and for the lower orders, is fascinating.

The most damning verdict on dancing was Mr Darcy's from Pride and Prejudice. Here he is in conversation  with Sir William Lucas:

“Do you dance, Mr. Darcy?"

"Not if I can help it!"

"What a charming amusement for young people this is, Mr. Darcy! There is nothing like dancing, after all. I consider it as one of the first refinements of polished societies."

"Certainly, sir; and it has the advantage also of being in vogue amongst the less polished societies of the world; every savage can dance.”

This Volta is probably more accurate - music is William Byrd - steps are tricky!



I like this music:

I like the 'medieval hardcore party mix' ... all good stuff.

Not sure the first youtube of 'Elizabeth' is a real volta ... I thought the volta was a variation of the gaillard and so was danced to a repeating beat exactly the same as, "God save our gra-cious queen, god save the Queen".

The last youtube 'Caliban's Dream' is from the collection of dance music 'Terpsichore' written by Michael Praetorius (despite his grand nom-de-plume he was German, born M. Schulteis in about 1571) ... that's should you want to find any other pieces in the same style. Another good composer/arranger was Tielman Susato whose popular collection of dance tunes was printed in 1551 under the title 'Danserye'. Here's a good production of Susato's music ... it's rather historic now in it's own right as it's by the much-missed David Munrow with the New London Consort, recorded in the late 1970s ... you'll probably recall hearing some of the pieces from classic films and BBC series such as 'Henry VIII and his six wives', and 'Elizabeth R' etc...



Which reminds me, has anyone heard from Gil recently? He was always a great fan of early music.

Thank you Meles meles and Temperance for another interesting thread. I think I have finished my thread on Historum about "No Renaissance without Islam" and I hope to have again more time for here...

Kind regards to both from Paul.

I’ve just watched the first two of those Lucy Worsley docs again. Interesting when talking about the waltz -  which is nowadays seen as a rather staid formal dance - that when it was first introduced to European high society, from its more peasanty origins, it was seen as particularly scandalous because of the close contact, embrace even, of the dance partners. At the time (early 19th century) but equally applicable throughout previous centuries, any interaction between young, un-married couples was very closely regulated and supervised. Nevertheless a dance was one of the rare occasions where flirting, intimacy and some physical contact were allowed, within limits, as long as they were open to scrutiny and strict control.

Indeed such codified intimacy, as was permitted by the dance, was surely even to be encouraged. The marriage market was highly competitive and young un-married women and men were under intense pressure to find a suitable mate. The whole of the first part of ‘Pride and Prejudice’ is set up through a series of dances, and as Jane Austen makes very clear the ability to dance was key to romantic success. Dancing wasn't just a pastime, but a key social skill that had to be learned, often from paid tutors, and regularly practiced almost like an athlete, if one was to succeed in love and life.

This whole idea of a dance being a rare opportunity for intimacy and flirting, and all conducted under public gaze and scrutiny, I find interesting ... especially when it's men dancing with men. All male dancing whether it's traditional Morris Men or hornpipes performed as physical excersise on confined ships, rarely has any intimacy. But what do you make of these:

US sailors dance together on deck in 1928:



Men practice their tangos in the side streets of Buenos Aires in the early 20th century:



I can only assume they were practising their dance skills, together in private, all the more to dazzle their female partners when, and if, they ever got to the ball.

Crossed posts - haven't read yours yet, MM, but will send this...

MM wrote:

...with lots of fascinating little details such that the minuet was often danced as an individual couple with everyone else looking on, judging you and probably making snide comments...

Sort of medieval Craig Revel Horwoods all holding up their "Two" paddles and sneering!

They had paddles on sale at the Arena yesterday. I was tempted to buy one, but thought better of it.

I must watch the programme again - had a bit of an argument yesterday with a lady who knows far more than I do about the history of the dance, especially ballet. She maintains that ballet began at the Court of Louis XIV, but I argued that it actually was brought to France during the previous cemtury - Catherine de Medici introduced the whole "masque" thing. It was originally Italian. Who brought the masque to England? They were certainly being performed at the court of the young Henry VIII: he first set eyes on Anne Boleyn dancing on 4th March 1522 at York Place:


“On shrouetewesdaie at night, thesaid Cardinall to the kyng and ambassadors made another supper, and after supper thei came into a great chamber hanged with Arras, and there was a clothe of estate, and many braunches, and on euery braunche. xxxii. torchettes of waxe, and in the nether ende of thesame chamber was a castle, in which was a principall Tower, in which was a Cresset burning: and two other lesse Towers stode on euery side, warded
and embattailed, and on euery Tower was a banner, one banner was of iii. rent hartes, the other was a ladies hand gripyng a mans harte, the third banner was a ladies hand turnyng a mannes hart: this castle was kept with ladies of straunge names, the first Beautie, the second Honor, the third Perseueraunce, the fourth Kyndnes, the fifth Constance, the sixte Bountie, the seuenthe Mercie, and the eight Pitie: these eight ladies had Millian gounes of white sattin, euery Lady had her name embraudered with golde, on their heddes calles, and Millein bonettes of gold, with Iwelles. Vnder nethe the basse fortresse of the castle were other eight ladies, whose names were, Dangier, Disdain, Gelousie, Vnkyndenes, Scorne, Malebouche, Straungenes, these ladies were tired like to women of Inde.

Then entered eight Lordes in clothe of golde cappes and all, and great mantell clokes of blewe sattin, these lordes were named. Amorus, Noblenes, Youth, Attendance, Loyaltie, Pleasure, Gentlenes, and Libertie, the kyng was chief of this compaignie, this compainie was led by one all in crimosin sattin with burnyng flames of gold, called Ardent Desire, whiche so moued the Ladies to geue ouer the Castle, but Scorne and Disdain saied they would holde the place, then Desire saied the ladies should be wonne and came and encoraged the knightes, then the lordes ranne to the castle, (at whiche tyme without was shot a greate peale of gunnes) and the ladies defended the castle with Rose water and Comfittes and the lordes threwe in Dates and Orenges, and other fruites made for pleasure but at the last the place was wonne, but Lady Scorne and her compaignie stubbernely defended them with boows and balles, till they were dnuen out of the place and fled. Then the lordes toke the ladies of honor as prisoners by the handes, and brought them doune, and daunced together verie pleasauntly, which much pleased the straungers, and when thei had
daunced their fill then all these disuisered themselfes and wer knowen: and then was there a costlv banket, and when all was done, the straungiers tooke their leaue of the king and the Cardinal and so departed into Flaunders, geuyng to the kyng muche commendacion.”

Anne got 9/10 from Craig - or from William Cornish, rather, Henry VIII's deviser of masques (he probably took the lead role of Ardent Desire, not Henry himself). I'm sure Cornish gave Anne the part of Perseverance because she was the only one of the ladies who was willing to do the necessary practice to perfect the intricate steps of his choreography. Some of the posh ladies must have driven Cornish mad - he had to have them in the masque because of their status at Court - how well they could actually dance - or how willing they were to sweat it out at rehearsal - was another matter.

Crossed posts with Temp - haven't read it yet but will post as it's a PS to my above.

I've just found this about male-only tango practice, from wiki:

"In Argentina, the onset in 1929 of the Great Depression, and restrictions introduced after the overthrow of the Hipólito Yrigoyen government in 1930, caused tango to decline. Its fortunes were reversed as tango became widely fashionable and a matter of national pride under the government of Juan Perón. Tango declined again in the 1950s, as a result of economic depression and the banning of public gatherings by the military dictatorships; male-only Tango practice—the custom at the time—was considered "public gathering". That, indirectly, boosted the popularity of rock and roll because, unlike Tango, it did not require such gatherings."

... which is interesting that in the macho streets of Latin America, all-male dancing, albeit for practice, was the norm, especially as the tango was being widely denounced, by the Vatican amongst others, as sinful, immoral, sexually intimate and downright disgusting:

From the NEW YORK TIMES, (January 22, 1914):

TANGO SHAME OF OUR DAYS. Patriarch of Venice Issues Energetic Denunciation of It.
Cardinal Cavallari, the successor of the present Pope as Patriarch of Venice, has issued an episcopal letter which is the most energetic of all those so far published with reference to the tango, and acquires even greater importance, as it is reported to have been inspired by the Pontiff. The letter condemns the tango in the strongest terms, referring to it as moral turpitude, and adding:
"It is everything that can be imagined. It is revolting and disgusting. Only those persons who have lost all moral sense can endure it. It is the shame of our days. Whoever persists in it commits a sin".
The Cardinal orders all ecclesiastics to deny absolution to those who, having danced the tango, do not promise to discontinue the practice.

... and, again from the NEW YORK TIMES, (December 1913):

TANGO DEFEATS VATICAN - Clergy's Efforts to Suppress Dancing Craze In Italy Fail.
Strenuous efforts made by the Vatican to suppress the tango dancing-mania In Italy have proved a failure. Following the example of Rome, there was issued throughout the country a circular giving instructions to the clergy to initiate a crusade against the tango and similar dances as "offensive to the purity of every right-minded person and unworthy of being introduced into houses and receptions attended by Catholic women."
All the great Italian pulpit orators have fulminated against the fashion, which now, however, is practically general in the salons of the Eternal City itself.

MM wrote:

Dancing wasn't just a past-time, but a key social skill that had to be learned, often from paid tutors, and regularly practiced almost like an athlete, if one was to succeed in love and life.

And far more useful if one were female than being able to chat in Latin. Remember the bit below from "A Man For All Seasons"?


But perhaps Latin and dancing are both OK! (Not for Saint Jerome, though, will return latter with a snippet about him and the dancing girls of Rome.)


Saw the winners of 2017 Strictly, Joe and Katya, doing their Argentine Tango yesterday - it was brilliant!


The core strength of this woman is phenomenal!




"Can you dance, too?"

Poor old Jerome. He had a really hard time in the desert, as he kept remembering the dancing girls in Rome. Quite put him off his translation work apparently. I wonder if the history of Western Christianity would have been different if he had just given up on the Vulgate and gone back to the vulgar - returned to Rome and some shady little bar where both the wine and the dancing girls were excellent?

What I want to know is how did he know about these girls in the first place?

Here is The Temptation of Jerome (1637 Francisco de Zurbaron). Actually I think the girls look perfectly respectable -  fully clothed and no glitter. What was silly old Jerome worrying about?

You can watch Joe and Katya's tango here:

Temperance wrote:

Here is The Temptation of Jerome (1637 Francisco de Zurbaron). Actually I think the girls look perfectly respectable -  fully clothed and no glitter. What was silly old Jerome worrying about?

A common mistake - this is the lesser known hallucination of Jerome when he was assaulted by the all-girl string quintet. He was ok with them in fact, at least right up until when they launched into "Air on a G String" (and de Zurbaron has captured the moment immaculately).

I have been wondering about these wind instruments, and that G-string as well ...

Temperance wrote:

..... had a bit of an argument yesterday with a lady who knows far more than I do about the history of the dance, especially ballet. She maintains that ballet began at the Court of Louis XIV, but I argued that it actually was brought to France during the previous cemtury - Catherine de Medici introduced the whole "masque" thing. It was originally Italian.

Yes it was definitly Catherine de Medici who introduced early forms of ballet a good seventy years or so before Louis XIV. The 'Balet comique de la Royne', composed and choreographed by Balthazar de Beaujoyeulx, was first staged in Paris on 15 October 1581 as part of the lavish and expensive court fesivities to mark the wedding of Catherine's sister, Margeurite de Lorraine, to the Duc de Joyeuse, and I think there were several even earlier ballets.

The music's quite nice too:



Louis XIV gets lots of credit for introducing ballet probably because he insisted on performing himself:

MM wrote:

The music's quite nice too...

I absolutely love the music, MM. I have just been doing a little dance around my sitting room to it. Hope no one saw me.      

Does anyone remember Caligula's dance from I Claudius? He was all done up as Aurelia, goddess of the dawn, if I remember correctly. Poor Claudius was terrified as to how he should respond, but as usual said just the right thing. (I think it was: "I've never seen anything quite like it, Majesty!") I've tried to find a YouTube of it, but unfortunately they all seem to be copyright restricted. But here is John Hurt talking about how much he enjoyed doing the routine!

Nielsen wrote:

I have been wondering about these wind instruments, and that G-string as well ...

The first recognisable "couple" dance is often said to be the estampie. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kLrSO5TRTZQ though the instrumentation here is "haut" music, a point made here about this later Italianate Istampitta. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DKxdCSbAtOE&list=PLt3Pke412qVcLG6qOVf47cOsufUnRPWui - so Jerome may just have feared the decibel level.

That second piece being played by David Munrow himself is described as a 14th century Italian 'saltarello'  in the booklet accompanying Munrow's recording 'Instruments of the Middle Ages and Renaissance', ... but the rhythm, in a fast 4:4, doesn't seem right for a saltarello, which is in a fast 6:8 time (and named from the peculiar leaping step, after the Italian verb saltare "to jump"), so I dunno ....

EDIT

Ah voila ... from wiki:

Medieval saltarelli - The principal source for the medieval Italian saltarello is the Tuscan manuscript Add MS 29987, dating from the late 14th or early 15th century and now in the British Library. The musical form of these four early saltarelli is the same as the estampie.

This is very fast - is it the same tune as the opening one from the Hardcore Medieval Party Mix? Good cardio!

Agreed - it is actually the "Istampitta Tre Fontane". btw - "haut" at that time and context meant "LOUD" not "high".

As in hautboys ... loud wood, such as in the spectacle presented to Elizabeth I at Kenilworth in 1575 and described in a letter by Robert Laneham : "This pageant was clozd up with a delectable harmony of Hautboiz, Schalkz, Cornets, and oother loud muzik

Meles meles wrote:

As in hautboys ... loud wood.

Indeed! Had a disagreement about that with Magnus Magnusson - he had it down as "high wood" in the "rehearsal" questions for Mastermind. Apparently the same duality exists in Icelandic.

MM wrote:

 Dancing wasn't just a pastime, but a key social skill that had to be learned, often from paid tutors, and regularly practiced almost like an athlete, if one was to succeed in love and life.

Even as recently as the late 1960s at my girls' school hostel we had dancing lessons.  I remember dancing with other girls, one of us having to take the male part.  And sometimes the corresponding boys' hostel students would come and we would have dances with them.  I already knew how to dance but these had more formal steps which weren't needed om real life.  Sometimes, (I think this was still the case in my time, though I have no specific memory of it) dancing was even judged at quite informal dances.  I remember being told that my parents had gained a third prize for their waltz, and the judge said my mother was the best walzer on the floor but my father had got giddy.  All that circling, no doubt! 

Of course by the time I was in my teens it was equally as important to be able to do the twist and go as low as you could.  One of my boyfriends had the admirable quality of being able to nearly touch the floor without toppling over. By that stage it wasn't chaperoned so closely though.  

(As an aside, my brother-in-law, a dictionary compiler for Oxford, once said to me that I was the only person he had heard pronounce all the letters of 'waltz'.  Why wouldn't you?)

I've found a bit in my Stoic book about dancing, offered by the great Marcus A. himself. The entry is for September 20th (I'm reading through the whole lot, not just day by day) and is headed: Life Isn't a Dance.


The art of living is more like wrestling than dancing, because an artful life requires being prepared to meet and withstand sudden and unexpected attacks.

- Marcus Aurelius, Meditations, 7.61.


Beneath this the otherwise intelligent commentator, Ryan Holiday, has observed:



Dancing is a popular metaphor for life...But anyone who has tried to do something difficult, where there is competition or an adversary, knows that the dancing metaphor is insufficient. Nobody ever gets up on stage and tries to tackle a dancer. The dancer never gets chocked out by a rival...Life, like wrestling, requires more than graceful movement. We have to undergo hard training and cultivate an indomitable will to prevail. Philosophy is the steel against which we sharpen that will and strengthen that resolve.



Mmm. Clearly Ryan knows more about philosophy than he does about dancing. He obviously has no idea about what goes on behind the scenes at the Bolshoi; and he most certainly has never done his Grade 8 ballet exam. Philosophy is not much use when you are trying to execute a pas de bourrée piqué et fouetté raccourci en pointe without falling over. You need steel all right - in your core muscles.


Murderous Melodrama at the Bolshoi

Mmmm - for all that steely will and resolve, to my recollection picturesof philosphers - ancient through to modern seem to be sedentary types - with grim expressions - possibly even suffering from piles or similar as a result. That can't be all tha good for you, can it?

And here too is the agony of watching dance - well not breathing until the Rose Adagio is over in the Sleeping Beauty, for instance. But on the whole it is almost as good to watch dance as do it. Have just seen a jolly - and slick hoofer spectacular - 42nd Street. Tap is not as hard as it looks unless you work hard to make it seem so - I'm thinking of Astaire and Kelly here. Tho I still am in thralled by that skilled early animation of a mouse dancing with Gene Kelly. And despite myself likewise  still enchanted by Shirley Temple and Bill Robinson. They did a great stair dance routine which it is said she learned in a couple of hours. But for agony, ballet is tops - at 14 I was actually crippled for three months so know the cost and pain; philosophy leads to a more permanent sick condition, I suppose.

Recently reading about Napoleon's 100 Days and the Waterloo Campaign, I inevitably came across mention of the Duchess of Richmond's ball that was held in Brussels on 15 June 1815, the night before the Battle of Quatre Bras and three days before Waterloo. The ball was hosted by Charlotte Lennox, Duchess of Richmond and her husband, Charles Lennox, 4th Duke of Richmond (in command of the reserve force in Brussels to defend the city in case of French invasion). With the exception of three generals, every senior officer in Wellington's army, as well as numerous allied Princes, Barons, Counts and Generals were there. It was a very grand affair, although the venue wasn't quite as glittering as portrayed in the 1970 film Waterloo: it was held in a coach house, which, while it had been spruced up and redecorated for the occasion, was still a fairly rustic hall with quite a low beamed ceiling rather like a barn.

But à propos of this thread, one interesting comment I came across was that, because of the revolutionary and then Napoleonic wars, British society had been rather cut off from the fashions in the rest of Europe until the end of hostilities in 1814. The Duchess of Richmond's ball was therefore one of the very first grand occasions at which young British ladies and gentlemen could try to assimilate some of the latest fashions, including the new dances, and try to demonstrate that despite everything they weren't really behind European fashions. One of these new European dances was of course the waltz. Although there is no record of the list of dances at the Duchess of Richmond's ball, the waltz almost certainly featured as it was specifically mentioned by a contemporary observer about the 1815 season in Brussels: "They begin a ball with a perfect froideur they go on with their dangerous waltz (in which all the Englishwomen join) and finish with the gallopade, a completely indecent and violent romp." A year later in 1816 the new waltz was certainly danced at the Prince Regent's court ball, as it was mentioned, with disapproval, by 'The Times' which thundered in an editorial about "this obscene display" and warned "every parent against exposing their daughter to so fatal a contagion".

Another dance that featured at the Duchess of Richmond's ball was the Highland reel performed by some of the Scottish soldiers, as Louisa Lennox, the Duchess's daughter recalled: "I well remember the Gordon Highlanders dancing reels at the ball. My mother thought it would interest foreigners to see them, which it did. I remember hearing that some of the poor men who danced in our house died at Waterloo. There was quite a crowd to look at the Scotch dancers."

When I went to dances as a child, there was the Highland Scottische, the Canadian Three-Step, the Valetta Waltz (which was the first dance where I was asked by a young man unknown to me to dance at a ball my father and grandmother had taken me to; regretfully I had to decline as I didn't know how to do it; his friend later asked me for another waltz and I could do that one - he sang Peggy O'Neill in time to the music to me), The Gypsy Tap, the Maxina, the Gay Gordons, and others that I have forgotten.  I never wondered about their names in those days, but thinking about them now, I am considering whether they would have been danced by the peoples of the lands/towns/ethnicities they suggest.

Temperance mentioned upthread the social importance of a ball in Jane Austen's time.  I'm improving now but I was "resting" some of last week and the week before as I felt decidedly below par - so was reading or watching videos.  I came across a video from 2013 where some people made a programme recreating the Netherfield Ball from Pride and Prejudice.  Some dance students were taught dances of the age - though the video goes into the logistics of candles for the ball, make-up, food and sundry other components necessary for a successful ball. I'll put the link in case anyone is interested (it's long though, over an hour).  

Georgette Heyer, one of my favourite light reading pleasures, also writes of balls in a similar style to Austen. People are judged according to what they wore and how they behaved. You can tell a person's class (both in the sense of what class they belonged to and whether they were classy or not) from this.

When I watched the YouTube video I was surprised how exerting the dances were, Caro.