vising in all matters of posture, deportment, and etiquette.
The dancing masters published the first scholarly treatises
on dance, and it is mainly owing to these works that we
have any technical knowledge of the dances of the period.
The earliest of the masters to be known by name is
Domenico da Piacenza, whose De arte saltandi et choreas
ducendi (On the art of dancing and directing choruses)
was published in 1416. Domenico’s book includes the ear-
liest known classification of dance steps and the first at-
tempt to analyse dances in technical language. It also lists
the chief courtly dances of the era as (in ascending order
of speed) the bassedanza, a slow processional dance with
gliding steps, the more animated quaternaria, the
saltorella, an exuberant dance that involved little jumps,
and the piva, or hornpipe. The high social status enjoyed
by the dancing master is best illustrated by the career of
Domenico’s disciple Antonio Cornazano (1431–c. 1500),
who became an important official at the court of the
SFORZA FAMILYin Milan. He was also apparently the first to
use the word balletto (from Italian ballare, to dance) for
the elaborate dance pageants of the day.
When Charles VIII of France invaded Italy in 1494,
he and his courtiers were astonished by the balleti of the
Italian courts, having seen nothing like them at home.
However, it was France and not Italy that would see the
development of dance into a formal theatrical art during
the following century. The balletto was first introduced to
the French court by CATHERINE DE’ MEDICI, who married
the future Henry II in 1533 and enticed the dancing
master Baltazarini di Belgiosio (Balthasar de Beaujoyeulx;
died c. 1587) to follow her. The first important BALLET
DE COUR, as the form became known in France, was the
Ballet comique de la Reine, devised for Catherine by Bal-
tazarini in 1581. This spectacular five-hour entertain-
ment, which combined dance with singing, recitations,
and elaborate sets, was staged in front of some 10,000 peo-
ple at the Louvre and is considered a milestone in the de-
velopment of the ballet proper. Another factor was the
publication in 1588 of the century’s most important work
on dance, the Orchésographie of Thoinot Arbeau (Jehan
Tabouret; 1519–95). In this wide-ranging work Arbeau
gave detailed descriptions of the era’s most popular dances
(notably the pavane, the galliard, and the gavotte) and
introduced an early system of dance notation. He also
described for the first time the five basic foot positions
that would become the basis of classical ballet a century
later. The development of the ballet de cour into the ballet
as we know it was completed during the reigns of Louis
XIII (1610–43) and Louis XIV (1643–1715), as the nar-
rative element grew more important, courtiers were re-
placed by professional performers, and a paying public
was admitted.
Although the establishment of dance as a theatrical
art was largely a process of refinement and formalization,
the history of social dance in the same period shows, in
some respects, an opposite tendency. During the Renais-
sance courtly forms of dance were constantly revitalized
by the influence of folk styles. In this there is a sharp con-
trast with the Middle Ages, which made a fairly rigid dis-
tinction between the gravely formal couple dances
thought suitable for knights and their ladies and the bois-
terous ring and chain dances of the peasantry. The influ-
ence of popular on courtly dance becomes most evident in
the later 16th century. In France, for example, many court
dances developed from the burla or branle, a peasant
round dance so vigorous that it is thought to be the origin
of the English word “brawl.” Similarly, the most frequently
mentioned dance of the century, the morisca, developed
from a folk dance of Moorish Spain. In England, a partic-
ularly lively style of dance predominated at the court of
ELIZABETH I, where courtiers vied to show off their strength
and agility in the jig. Elizabeth herself was a lover of coun-
try dances and, in her youth, a keen exponent of the volta,113322 ddaanncceeDance Dancing Peasant Couple(1514), an engraving on
copper by Albrecht Dürer.
Photo AKG London