Renaissance dances belong to the broad group of

historical dance Historical dance (or early dance) is a term covering a wide variety of Western European-based dance types from the past as they are danced in the present. Today historical dances are danced as performance, for pleasure at themed balls or dance clu ...

s. During the

Renaissance The Renaissance ( , ) , from , with the same meanings. is a period in European history marking the transition from the Middle Ages to modernity and covering the 15th and 16th centuries, characterized by an effort to revive and surpass ideas ...

period, there was a distinction between

country dance A country dance is any of a very large number of social dances of a type that originated in the British Isles; it is the repeated execution of a predefined sequence of figures, carefully designed to fit a fixed length of music, performed by a ...

s and court dances. Court dances required the dancers to be trained and were often for display and entertainment, whereas country dances could be attempted by anyone. At Court, the formal entertainment would often be followed by many hours of country dances which all present could join in. Dances described as country dances such as Chiarantana or Chiaranzana remained popular over a long period – over two centuries in the case of this dance. A Renaissance dance can be likened to a ball. Knowledge of court dances has survived better than that of country dances as they were collected by dancing masters in manuscripts and later in printed books. The earliest surviving manuscripts that provide detailed dance instructions are from 15th century Italy. The earliest printed dance manuals come from late 16th century France and Italy. The earliest dance descriptions in England come from the Gresley manuscript, 1500, found in the Derbyshire Record Office, D77 B0x 38 pp 51–79. These have been recently published as "Cherwell Thy Wyne (Show your joy): Dances of fifteenth-century England from the Gresley manuscript". The first printed English source appeared in 1651, the

first edition The bibliographical definition of an edition includes all copies of a book printed from substantially the same setting of type, including all minor typographical variants. First edition According to the definition of ''edition'' above, a b ...

of Playford. The dances in these manuals are extremely varied in nature. They range from slow, stately "processional" dances ( bassadance,

pavane The ''pavane'' ( ; it, pavana, ''padovana''; german: Paduana) is a slow processional dance common in Europe during the 16th century (Renaissance). The pavane, the earliest-known music for which was published in Venice by Ottaviano Petrucci, ...

, almain) to fast, lively dances (

galliard The ''galliard'' (; french: gaillarde; it, gagliarda) was a form of Renaissance dance and music popular all over Europe in the 16th century. It is mentioned in dance manuals from England, Portugal, France, Spain, Germany, and Italy. Dance f ...

coranto {{About, , the family of dances, Courante Corantos were early informational broadsheets, precursors to newspapers. Beginning around the 14th century, a system developed where letters of news and philosophical discussion would be sent to a central ...

canario The Canary dance (known as Canario in Italian sources, Canarie in French ones) was a Renaissance dance inspired in an indigenous dance and song of the Canary Islands (probably the one known as Tajaraste) that became popular all over Europe in the ...

). The former, in which the dancers' feet were not raised high off the floor were styled the ''dance basse'' while energetic dances with leaps and lifts were called the ''haute dance''.

Queen Elizabeth I Elizabeth I (7 September 153324 March 1603) was Queen of England and Ireland from 17 November 1558 until her death in 1603. Elizabeth was the last of the five House of Tudor monarchs and is sometimes referred to as the "Virgin Queen". El ...

enjoyed galliards, and ''la spagnoletta'' was a court favourite. Some were choreographed, others were improvised on the spot. One dance for couples, a form of the galliard called volta, involved a rather intimate hold between the man and woman, with the woman being lifted into the air while the couple made a turn. Other dances, such as

branle A branle (, ), also bransle, brangle, brawl, brawle, brall(e), braul(e), brando (in Italy), bran (in Spain), or brantle (in Scotland), is a type of French dance popular from the early 16th century to the present, danced by couples in either a li ...

s or bransles, were danced by many people in a circle or line.

Fifteenth-century Italian dance

Our knowledge of 15th-century Italian dances comes mainly from the surviving works of three Italian dance masters:

Domenico da Piacenza Domenico da Piacenza (c. 1400 – c. 1470), also known as Domenico da Ferrara, was an Italian Renaissance dancing master. He became a very popular teacher with his students – most notably Antonio Cornazzano and Guglielmo Ebreo da Pesaro – who b ...

Antonio Cornazzano Antonio Cornazzano (c. 1430 in Piacenza – 1484 in Ferrara) was an Italian poet, writer, biographer, and dancing master. Biography In the city of Piacenza, which was then in the Duchy of Milan, Antonio Cornazzano was born probably in 1432. H ...

and

Guglielmo Ebreo da Pesaro Guglielmo Ebreo da Pesaro (c. 1420 – c. 1484) was a Jewish Italian dancer and dancing master at some of the most influential courts in Renaissance Italy, including Naples, Urbino, Milan, and Ferrara. His byname '' Ebreo'' means simply ‘H ...

. Their work deals with similar steps and dances, though some evolution can be seen. The main types of dances described are bassa danza and ''balletto''. These are the earliest European dances to be well-documented, as we have a reasonable knowledge of the choreographies, steps and music used.

Gallery

References

Sources

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External links

www.earlydancecircle.co.ukThe Renaissance Dance Homepage
* * ttp://www.early-dance.de/taxonomy/term/6 Renaissance Dance Eventslisted at the Calendar of Early-Dance
Official website

Modern performance

Many groups exist that recreate historical music and dance from the Renaissance period
The Early Dance Circle
is an umbrella group for early dance in the UK
Renaissance Footnotes, a UK dance group recreating dances of the renaissance
{{Renaissance navbox History of dance

Dance Dance is a performing art form consisting of sequences of movement, either improvised or purposefully selected. This movement has aesthetic and often symbolic value. Dance can be categorized and described by its choreography, by its repertoir ...

European court festivities