Dance

Dancing was enjoyed and performed by those at all levels of European society for centuries. It was not until the fifteenth century, however, that names of individual dance teachers and choreographers emerged from the historical record, the same time that dance treatises were being written. Dance was part of major state events, theatrical spectacles, religious festivals, and marriage celebrations as well as more intimate, private celebrations as a means of diversion. Many early studies into Renaissance dance from the first three-quarters of the twentieth century were by musicologists, with little insight into the actual dance practices themselves. From the 1970s, however, scholarly research has increasingly focused on the dance and has been combined with reconstructions and performances of documented choreographies. Translations of key treatises opened up the area still further. Dance historians have mostly concentrated on the dance practices of the elite level of society, because this area is from where the overwhelming majority of the documentary source material comes. Contextual studies have expanded our knowledge and understanding of the part dance played in the daily life of society from 1400 to 1650. Such studies often concentrate on a specific court or city, a particular festive event, on how people of the time viewed dancing, or on the intellectual foundations of the theoretical writings on dance. More recently research into the interrelationship between dance and other artistic practices such as painting, literary works, garden design, martial arts, gesture, and the intellectual beliefs of the period has gained prominence. Despite this activity there are still large areas of Renaissance dance practices about which we know very little; for example, specific information on the dance practices from Germanic areas of Europe, biographical information on dance teachers and choreographers, and the dance curriculum and the method of dance instruction at both the humanist schools and in the schools set up to teach dance specifically and often music.