Dance History

Lecture with digital slides and high quality recorded music

Dance: Manners Morals and Class. A Social History from the Renaissance to the Romantic Eras

‘Do not spit or blow your nose too much’ advises a 16th century dance treatise. From the mid-15th century onwards, descriptions of dances, their music, and expected behaviour and etiquette show the great importance of dance in people’s lives. The lecture continues through the baroque era to the emergence of the waltz, which swept all the old court dances away; though not without moral censure of the lax behaviour it was supposed to have engendered.

Recording

CDs of historical dance music with the Broadside Band include Danses populaires françaises: Arbeau’s Orchésographie 1588 (Harmonia Mundi HMA 1901152), Il Ballarino: Italian Dances c.1600 (Hyperion Helios CDH 55059), English Country Dances (Saydisc CD-SDL 393), Songs and Dances from Shakespeare (Saydisc CD-SDL 409), Dances of Court and Country (Classical Communications CD858).

Writing

Jeremy Barlow’s book A Dance Through Time: Images of Western Social Dancing from the Middle Ages to Modern Times has just been published (Bodleian Library, Oxford).