"Margaret McGowan examines the diverse forms of dance in the Renaissance, contemporary attitudes towards dance, and the light this throws on moral, political and aesthetic concerns of the time. Among the subjects she covers are: expectations of dance; style, costume, music and social coding; court dance versus social dancing; dance and the Valois dynasty; professional dancers, virtuosos and choreographers; burlesque; opposition to dance; and dance and the people. McGowan's sophisticated analysis of formal dance treatises allows her to recreate a sense of the actual practice of Renaissance dance and the mechanics of making a ballet. Nearly one hundred illustrations, many of them rare, accompany the text."--BOOK JACKET.

The Dancing Body in Renaissance Choreography is a study of the theory of kinetic theatricality in the western European context. The dancing body of courtly social dance is analyzed in French and Italian dance treatises of the Renaissance through the intertexts of oratorical action, pedagogical discourses of civility and conceptions of value emanating from descriptions of social interaction in courtesy books.

The most valuable resource for 16th-century dances and dance music, this volume describes galliards, pavans, branles, gavottes, lavolta, basse dance, morris dance, and more, with detailed instructions of steps. 44 illustrations.

Fabritio Caroso was dancing master to some of the greatest princely families of Italy, and Nobiltà di dame, his sumptuous collection of ballroom dances and their music, reflects an age that believed that the person of high rank should be a work of art, uniting strength and beauty. Caroso's detailed instructions (including rules for steps, style and etiquetter, and forty-eight actual choreographies) are unequalled by any contemporary manual in their specificity and clarity. Most dances are preceeded by an engraving showing the opening position and illustrating many aspects of dress, posture, and gesture. A full scholarly apparatus, giving new information unavailable elsewhere, makes the book even more valuable to dancers and to students of dance and music at the junction of the Renaissance and Baroque eras.

This volume investigates environmental and political crises that occurred in Europe during the late Middle Ages and the early Modern Period, and considers their effects on people’s lives. At this time, the fragile human existence was imagined as a ‘Dance of Death’, where anyone, regardless of social status or age, could perish unexpectedly. This book covers events ranging from cooling temperatures and the onset of the Little Ice Age, to the frequent occurrence of epidemic disease, pest infestations, food shortages and famines. Covering the mid-fourteenth to mid-seventeenth centuries, this collection of essays considers a range of countries between Iceland (to the north), Italy (to the south), France (to the west) and the westernmost parts of Russia (to the east). This wide-reaching volume considers how deeply climate variability and changes affected and changed society in the late medieval to early modern period, and asks what factors, other than climate, interfered in the development of environmental stress and socio-economic crises. This book will be of great interest to students and scholars of Environmental and Climate History, Environmental Humanities, Medieval and Early Modern History and Historical Geography, as well as Climate Change and Environmental Sciences.

Covering eight classical dance forms of India Bharatanatyam, Kathak, Kuchipudi, Kathakali, Manipuri, Mohiniattam, Odissi and Sattriya Leela Venkataraman seamlessly weaves together a historical perspective with the contemporary scenario. Stripped of their association with the temple and the court, classical dance traditions in India went through a series of unprecedented change in the period marking the last few years of British rule and thereafter. From becoming part of the nationalist struggle when India was trying to rediscover its lost identity, to sharing the international stage today with dance forms from all over the world, the last sixty-six years have seen many changes in perspective and presentation of Indian Classical Dance some intentional, others involuntary. While looking at these years closely and their impact on dance forms, one realises that this is a phase in an ongoing process, with each new generation of dancers and musicians adding to an already rich tapestry of tradition."