Of the Antient Dance Of Dancing in General Of sundry Requisites for the Perfection of the Art of Dancing Some Thoughts on the Utility of Learning to Dance, and especially upon the Minuet Summary Account of various Kinds of Dances in different Parts of the World Of Pantomimes W hat I have here to say is rather in the nature of an apology than of a preface or advertisement. The very title of a Treatise upon the art of dancing by a dancing-master, implicitly threatens so much either of the exager

One of the greatest and most admired institutors of youth, whose fine taste has been allowed clear from the least tincture of pedantry, Quintilian recommends especially the talent of dancing, as conducive to the formation of orators; not, as he very justly observes, that an orator should retain any thing of the air of a dancing-master, in his motion or gesture; but that the impression from the graces of that art should have insensibly stoln into his manner, and fashioned it to please. Even that

I n most of the nations among the antients, dancing was not only much practised, but constituted not even an inconsiderable part of their religious rites and ceremonies. The accounts we have of the sacred dances, of the Jews especially, as well as of other nations, evidently attest it. The Greeks, who probably took their first ideas of this art, as they did of most others, from Egypt, where it was in great esteem and practice, carried it up to a very high pitch. They were in general, in their bo

T his is one of the arts, in which, as in all the rest, the study of nature is especially to be recommended. She is an unerring guide. She gives that harmony, that power of pleasing to the productions of those who consult her, which such as neglect her must never expect. They will furnish nothing but monsters and discordances; or, at the best, but sometimes lucky hits, without meaning or connexion. All the imitative arts acknowledge this principle. In Poetry, a happy choice of the most proper wo

But to give a sentiment, a man must have it first: where a pathetic sentiment is well possessed of the mind, the expression of it is diffused over the whole body. The theatre shows to advantage a well proportioned dancer. A tall person appears the more majestic on it; but those of a middling stature are more generally fit for every character; and may make up in gracefulness what they want in size. The remarkably tall commonly want the graces to be seen in those of the more general standard. A yo

W as I, in quality of a dancing-master, to offer even the strongest reasons of inducement to learn this art, they could not but justly lose much, if not all, of their weight, from my supposed interest in the offering them; besides the partiality every artist has for his art. It would however exceed the bounds prescribed to modesty itself, were I to neglect availing myself of the authority of others, who were not only far from being professors of this art, but who hold the highest rank in the pub

  Cantatur et saltatur apud omnes gentes, aliquo saltem modo , Quint.  ...

A s almost every country has dances particular to it, or, at least, so naturalized by adoption from others, that in length of time they pass for originals; a slight sketch of the most remarkable of them may serve to throw a light upon this subject, entertaining to some, and both entertaining and useful to others. In Britain , you have the hornpipe, a dance which is held an original of this country. Some of the steps of it are used in the country-dances here, which are themselves a kind of dance

  I n Turky , dances have been, as of old in Greece, and elsewhere instituted in form of a religious ceremony. The Dervishes who are a kind of devotionists execute a dance, called the Semaat in a circle, to a strange wild-simphony, when holding one another by the hand, they turn round with such rapidity, that, with pure giddiness, they often fall down in heaps upon one another. They have also in Turky, as well as India and Persia, professed dancers, especially of the female sex, under the name o

  T he spirit of dancing prevails, almost beyond imagination, among both men and women, in most parts of Africa. It is even more than instinct, it is a rage, in some countries of that part of the globe. Upon the Gold-coast especially, the inhabitants are so passionately fond of it, that in the midst of their hardest labor, if they hear a person sing, or any musical instrument plaid, they cannot refrain from dancing. There are even well attested stories of some Negroes flinging themselves at the

  I n this part of the world, so lately discovered, nothing is a stronger proof of the universality of dancing, of its being, in short, rather an human instinct, than an art, than the fondness for dancing every where diffused over this vast continent. In Brazil , the dancers, whether men or women, make a point of dancing bare-headed. The reason of this is not mentioned: it cannot however be thought a very serious one, since nothing can be more comical than their gestures, their contortions of bo

  A s this branch of the art of dancing is often mentioned, especially in this country, without a just idea being affixed to it, or any other idea than what is vulgarly taken from a species of compositions which are sometimes exhibited after the play, on the theatre here, (not to mention Sadler’s wells ) and go by the name of pantomime entertainments; it may not be unacceptable to the reader, my laying down before him the true grounds and nature of this diversion, which once made so great a figu

The decoration represents a wood intersected by several walks, which form an agreeable perspective of distances. At the bottom of the theatre, and in the middle, there is a grand walk, terminated by a small mount, on the summit of which is seen a colonnade, that forms the peristile of a temple. Venus, preceded by the Graces and several nimphs, comes out of the temple, descends the mount, and advances to the front of the wood; the simphony to be the most agreeable and melodious imaginable, to ann

* Hanc partem Musicæ disciplinæ Majores mutam nominârunt, quæ ore clauso loquitur, et quibusdam gesticulationibus facit intelligi, quod vix narrante lingua, aut scripturæ textu possit agnosci. Cassiod , var. 1. 20. Loquacissimas manus, linguosos digitos, silentium clamosum, expositionem tacitam. Idem....