FIRST PART A SHORT HISTORY OF DANCE FROM ANTIQUITY TO THE BEGINNING OF THE 19TH CENTURY CHAPTER 5 THE SIXTEENTH CENTURY 5.1 The Renaissance The culture of the Renaissance, with the rediscovery of the classics, had reintroduced a pagan spirit into society.Renaissance culture was not bound to rigid theological-metaphysical dogmas, but was free to range from art to philosophy, from medicine to astronomy, from morality to politics. Art, completely freed from morality, became a way to communicate with the pure beauty of form. Even politics became independent from religion: the sovereign no longer reigned by divine right, but thanks to his own virtues and the strength with which he imposed his dominion. The fervor and intense thought activity of the Renaissance are also the basis of numerous scientific discoveries and inventions, the most important of which is certainly that of the press for the impact it had on the diffusion of culture. Until the 14th century, books were written on parchment by scribes, mainly monks, and the long production times made them a rare product accessible to few. But towards the middle of the century the invention of movable type printing by the German John Gutenberg revolutionized the transmission of knowledge in Europe. In 1456, the first book in movable type, the Bible, was printed. Over the next fifty years, hundreds of thousands of books were produced in Europe, perhaps more than all the scribes had transcribed in the previous millennium. There were also notable improvements in the quality of life; majestic palaces arose in the cities, considerable impetus was given to the construction of wider streets, fountains, gardens and museums. In the residences of the princes, the arts, music, dance, poetry and theater found widespread diffusion. Among the higher classes, sumptuous clothing, the luxury of homes, cultured and gallant conversation, and the magnificence of parties became a distinctive sign of the holders of power. 5.2 The political use of the celebration party In the second half of the 16th century, Italy experienced a period of decline, both economic, due to the diminished importance of the Mediterranean in trade, and cultural, due to the heavy climate that had been created with the Counter-Reformation and the Spanish hegemony, which it was established directly in the Duchy of Milan, in the State of the Garrisons and in southern Italy, and indirectly in almost all the independent states. The Church, after the Council of Trent, in an attempt to reaffirm Catholic values, tried to strike the imagination of the masses with the pomp of ceremonies, with processions aimed at receiving certain graces, with devotions against illnesses, in short with a whole series of practices that had already been contested not only by Protestant reformers, but also by Christian humanists. Towards the middle of the century, the Jesuit order established itself, distinguishing itself for the activism with which it dealt with the education of consciences. In their numerous colleges, young people from the ruling class were educated, in the belief that by acting on their education it would be possible to indirectly influence the entire society. To achieve this aim, the Jesuits realized the need to radically change the attitude of Catholicism towards Renaissance culture, of which the secular and rebellious tendencies had to be rejected, but the style and form and sometimes even the interests could be accepted. worldly. As in the 15th century, also in the 16th the courts and republics into which the peninsula was divided made extensive use of processions, banquets, triumphal entrances, tournaments, jousts, fireworks and of course dance performances, in order to legitimize their power and show off their magnificence in the displays. The rivalry that had been created between the various centers of power ended up giving a further increase in the organization of public celebrations, whether secular or ecclesiastical, which were used by the powerful for propaganda purposes. In the eyes of foreign guests, the party must have appeared as a microcosm of the larger, perfectly organized macrocosm of the state. For the people, the festival had a function very similar to that of circus shows and gladiator fights in ancient Rome, an instrument of power to disguise and above all to distract attention from social imbalances. 5.3 The dances of the sixteenth century In the 16th century a great variety of dances arose, many of which were merely a continuous evolution of the popular branle and the bassa danza and others which required a certain virtuosity such as gagliarda, five steps, tordjon, volta. Some dances were constructed mathematically, to appeal to reason and science, in line with the new perception of man and the world. The figures traced on the floor by the dancers (triangles, spirals, interlocking rings) had precise meanings, unfortunately lost today, so that subtle messages could be conveyed through gestures and models. Geographical discoveries also influenced the rhythms of dance art. A dance took its name from the Canary Islands which was reminiscent of Spanish flamenco in its constant stomping. The Canarian arrived in the Iberian Peninsula probably from the Canary Islands. The Genoese navigator Nicoloso da Recco, who reached the archipelago from Portugal in 1341, in his travel report De Canaria et insulis reliquis ultra Ispaniam in Occeano noviter repertis , mentions a courtship dance of these populations which was very similar to that performed by the French peasants, also in the arrangement of the dancers who faced each other and approached each other and then moved away with leaps and stamps of their feet. 5.3.1 Grace, gracefulness and sprezzatura As in the 15th century, also in the following century the distinctive characteristics of the dance performance are constituted by dignity and measure. Very explicit in this sense is the warning of Baldassarre Castiglione who, in the Book of the Courtier (1528), forbids the perfect courtly man from being caught taking part in popular festivals and from trying his hand at dancing with the peasants. At the court of Urbino in 1507, in which Castiglione sets his opera, the noblemen participate incognito in the people's dances, where the dance is often unbridled and always "high", i.e. skipped, and fast. But at court they must exercise it "with a certain dignity, tempered however with graceful and airy sweetness of movements", avoiding "that quickness of the feet and duplicated retorts" which, if appreciated in a dance master, are however not suitable to a gentleman. When a noblewoman dances, according to Castiglione, she should not make movements that are "too energetic and violent", but move with grace and dignity. The lady of the court, in addition to having a good knowledge of literature, music and painting, must know how to dance and know how to entertain others with "games, laughter, jokes, and the other things we see going on at court every day... .». Castiglione also encourages those who live at court «... to practice in all things sprezzatura , that is, to act with a certain nonchalance, so as to hide all the art and make everything that is done or said appear to be effortless ...». A similar concept is found in the Galateo overo de' costumes, the treatise on good manners written by Giovanni della Casa towards the middle of the century, which recommends "grace and grace" in behavior on every social occasion. Despite the recommendations of theorists of good manners, the dances of the sixteenth century differ, however, from those of the previous century in which grace and lightness predominated. The most popular dance was the gagliarda, hopping and full of complex variations, which required considerable dexterity from the dancers. The volta was born in this period, the prototype of closed couple dances, in which the lady and the knight are facing each other and in which the physical contact between the two partners, quite unusual until then, often causes scandal. The vault, in fact, is a closed couple dance, in which you never change partners. The man with his left arm takes the lady on his right hip and places his right hand under the splint of her torso. The lady, in turn, places her right hand on the knight's shoulder, holding the skirt with the other hand, to prevent it from rising excessively. 5.3.2 Courtesies, manners and rules of conduct A significant aspect of any ballroom dance were the so-called "creanze", the initial movements, primarily the reverence. In performing the reverence a person had to demonstrate the distinction of one's social behavior. Reverence forms a fundamental part of all 16th and 17th century dances, and its execution was sometimes considered more important than the precision of steps and movements. In reverence, the moment the body bends, the head remains erect. Only during court dances was it compulsory to bend it slightly. The reverence of the ladies in the 16th century was profound and full of affected gravity, also due to the heavy, cumbersomely shaped and floor-length dresses, as they were not supposed to show their legs in any way. For this reason, the ballroom dance technique of the 16th century did not generally take into consideration the movements of the legs, which instead would be highlighted in the following century. Only overcoming the rules of etiquette, the possibility of moving freely with a partner and dancing for the pleasure of doing so could lead to an evolution of the female role in ballroom dance. This was the reason why slow dances, such as bassa danza, began to go out of fashion. The ladies' clothing, already quite bulky in itself, did not include accessories other than fans and handkerchiefs which were generally placed in the outer sleeve of the dress. The fan was sometimes worn hanging from a chain that reached knee height. Male reverence consisted of removing the headdress and tilting the body without reaching complete flexion. The fingers of the hand, with the exception of the thumb, were hidden in the folds of the dress and retained this position for the entire duration of the dance. An aspect that should not be overlooked, to understand the importance of the initial movements, is the clothing of that era: on social occasions - lunches, walks, business conversations or dancing entertainment - gentlemen wore hats, cloaks and swords. In the 17th century the cloak fell into disuse, but the hat and sword, and the fan for women, still remained essential accessories of daily clothing. Wearing a hat during a dance required a certain skill in putting it on and taking it off quickly and naturally, coordinating the movements of the hands with the positions and timing of the dance. After the reverence, the knight could hold the hat with his left hand and dance with his head uncovered if he didn't want to wear it, otherwise he had to put it on with a circular movement of the hand avoiding covering his face. In the treatise Il Ballarino Fabrizio Caroso recommends keeping the headgear so that only the external part is visible, avoiding showing traces of sweat and wear on the internal part. Even more limiting in movement was the sword, which was kept in its sheath and hung almost at the height of the left hip. In the part of his treatise which deals with the galliarda, given the particularly acrobatic character of the steps, Cesare Negri advises not to bring the sword when taking part in a dance party. 5.3.3 Pavana and gagliarda In the 16th century the dances became more complex and fast and virtuosic dances appeared as can be seen from the writings of the treatise writers who, over the course of the century and until the following one, classified all the 16th century choreographies. The music, meanwhile, was enriched with the sound of new instruments, with exotic elements, with the contrast between slow and fast rhythms, while the figures became true performances of skill and motor coordination. In the galliarda the men demonstrated their physical prowess with almost acrobatic jumps, in the vault they lifted the ladies, keeping them suspended with one knee. The agility that sixteenth-century dances required was, however, in contrast with the evolution of fashion, which imposed increasingly cumbersome clothes on nobles, made with heavy brocades and often adorned with precious stones. The pavane appears at the beginning of the 16th century as an aristocratic ceremonial dance. The first music for pavane is found in the fourth book of Joan Ambrosio Dalza's collection Intabulatura de Lauto , published in Venice in 1508 by the publisher Ottaviano Petrucci. The origin of the name pavana is uncertain: according to some it derives from padovana, as the dance was performed for the first time in Padua and this would suggest that it was born in Italy. Others state, however, referring to the technique of performing the dance, they derive the name from the peacock, as it is a dance in which the performers "preen". In fact, the knight, with superb bearing and solemn step, places his right arm, in an arch, under the cape, placing his left hand on the hilt of the sword which he carries on the left side, with the elbow towards the outside. In this way it causes a large lifting back of the cloak, drawing a figure similar to the peacock's wheel. Due to its majestic character, the pavan was often performed as a parade for the guests entering the rooms where the party was held. At court parties, a rigid ceremony based on rank dictated the order of entry into the ballroom. Thoinot Arbeau claims that the pavan originates from Spain, from where it was imported into France during the reign of Henry III. Since it was Catherine de Medici who spread the art of dance at the Valois court, an Italian origin of the pavane is more likely, even if the first written note referring to it dates back to 1508, a period therefore much earlier than the arrival of Catherine in France. At the French court the dances opened with the execution of the pavane of the king or queen, then the dolphin danced and the others followed. The dancing couples moved together to the center of the room, bowed to the king and positioned themselves in front. The knight took the lady's left hand at finger level with his right hand, raising his palm almost to his shoulders and releasing his arm. The lady, facing the knight's side, held her dress with her right hand and slightly bent arm. The knights began the dance with the left foot, the ladies with the right. For the entire duration of the pavan only one type of step was performed which could be simple or double: it was repeated forwards, backwards or sideways, always rather sliding and very contained, especially for women, due to the clothes of the time, which they certainly didn't make movement easy. In the manuals of the two main Italian dance masters, Fabritio Caroso and Cesare Negri, a variant of the pavane, the pavaniglia, of Spanish origin also appears: in Spain it was called pavanilla italiana , in France pavane d'Espagne . Another variant of the pavana was the passamezzo, mentioned for the first time in 1546 in Antonio Rotta's Intabulatura per lute. Also called pass'e mezzo in Italian and passemeze in French, it has a binary rhythm, but is faster than the pavana and is usually followed by the gagliarda. The gagliarda was generally performed as a closing to the pavana, to give it a lively ending, without slipped steps, but skipped ones. It consisted of a series of leg jumps and throws that required considerable agility and included movements in all directions (forward, backward, sideways, diagonally). It was the only dance that men danced bareheaded (with hat in hand). In the early days it even incorporated pantomime, aimed at courtship. Even some criticisms formulated towards this dance by observers and commentators of the time are useful for better understanding its nature and structure: the tumultuous nature of the dance often created disorder and pushed the girls to let loose more than necessary. Throughout the sixteenth century, the pavana and the current were the most practiced dances at festivals and only the appearance of the minuet marked their decline. 5.4 Dance masters and inventors In the sixteenth century the dance master was still the undisputed arbiter of court ceremonial and continued to also hold the role of master of etiquette or good manners, but the art of dancing was moving towards professionalization and spectacular theatrical representation and was acquiring a increasingly "public" function, underlining and codifying a web of relationships and social ties, both within the court and between the various powerful people of Italy. Towards the middle of the century, the first school for dance masters and dancers was born in Milan: that of Pompeo Diobono, in which an entire generation of dancers and dance "inventors" were trained, who spread the Italian style to European courts. In 1554 Diobono was invited to Paris by Marshal de Brissac, French governor in Piedmont and was given the task by King Henry II of taking care of the physical and social education of his second son Charles, Duke of Orléans. After the death of the sovereign, who passed away in 1559 due to an accident during a knightly tournament, Diobono remained at the court of the regent, Catherine de' Medici, maintaining the role of dance master for about thirty years. Two great dance masters dominated the scene in the 16th century, one in the Lazio area, the other in Milan: Fabrizio Caroso and Cesare Negri. 5.5 Fabritio Caroso Fabritio Caroso (1527-1605), originally from Sermoneta, today in the province of Latina, lived in Rome where he practiced the profession of dancer, dance master, composer and dance theorist. His work Il Ballarino , printed in Venice in 1581, was reprinted in Rome in 1600 with the title changed to Nobiltà di dame. Book once called "Il Ballarino" and the clarification " Collection of various dances performed on wedding occasions and parties by noble knights and ladies of different nations ". The first part of the Ballarino is entirely dedicated to the steps, which are first listed in all their possible variations, then described and codified, specifying the position and movement of the feet, as well as body posture. The dances open and close with a reverence that can last from four to eight beats (grave reverence). In the dances of the sixteenth century, compared to the dances of the previous century, the variety of steps and positions is much wider: to the simple step and the double step are added spezzato , seguito , fioretto, trabucco, trango, continenza and many others as well as numerous “mutations”, i.e. virtuosic variations with which dancers could enrich their performances. The dances described in the two treatises, with courtly titles ( Alta Regina, Ardente Sole, Fulgente Stella, Gloria d'Amore, Chiara Stella, Leggiadra Ninfa etc.), are each dedicated to queens and gentlewomen of France, Spain and Italy, with the heading "in praise" of the same together with a sonnet, a madrigal or a villanelle that praises their virtues. The authors of the treatises, in fact, used to dedicate the entire volume to an illustrious personality and each of the dances contained in the treatise to a different lady from whom the dance often took its name: for example the Alta Mendoza was dedicated to the wife of the governor of Milan Anna de Mendoza, while the Amorosina Grimana was a pavaniglia dedicated to the princess of Venice, Morosina Morosini Grimani. In the 1581 edition Il Ballarino was dedicated by the author to the Grand Duchess of Tuscany Bianca Capello de' Medici; the 1600 edition to the dukes of Parma and Piacenza Ranuccio and Margherita Farnese. In the second part of the treatise the choreographies are described. In some cases the author is clearly indicated, in others it is noted as "uncertain author" or he is not named at all; this suggests that these are dances that have been in use for some time, of which the memory of who had choreographed them and when had now been lost. They can therefore provide useful indications for the reconstruction of the choreographies of previous periods. Although the text is very precise in the description of the movements, sometimes details remain unclear, and therefore today we are witnessing various interpretations of the same choreography: in only one case is the geometric design of the dancers' spatial path shown. This type of ambiguity is sometimes also found in the description of the passages, because the author takes for granted some details that were probably known to everyone at the time. In addition to the descriptions of the dances, the various steps and the rules, the treatises are also accompanied by illustrations, made using copper engravings (vague and beautiful copper figures), which depict the couple in a position of the dance, almost always the initial one. The illustrations had more the function of embellishing the text than of illustrating the positions of the dance, since despite the references in the verbal discussion to the "present drawing", they were not sufficient to explain unclear aspects of the verbal description. The engravings have, however, an extraordinary documentary value regarding the clothes and accessories worn by nobles on the occasion of dance parties. There are no drawings in the treatises that represent the scheme of the choreography, with one exception: the Contrapasso nuovo , a dance for three knights and three ladies «made with true Rule, perfect Theorica and Mathematica», contained in Caroso's treatise of 1600. A illustration, which resembles a corolla surrounded by six petals, with the heading «The contrapasso done with true mathematics on the verses of Ovid» represented the circular path of the «intrecciata» or «chained walk to be done in wheel", a chain that was performed starting from the position in a circle of alternating ladies and men. The engraving represents the intertwining of two closed wavy lines each with three concave waves and three convex waves; at the six meeting points the alternating writings «Dma» and «Cro» indicated the positions of the three ladies and the three knights before starting the braid. On one of the wavy lines we read «this is the Lady's line» and on the other «this is the Knight's line». The music that appears in this work, all composed by the author, is refined and elegant in its formal appearance, while in its fabric it retains the simplicity of dance music. The list of steps has almost doubled in number, an element that allows us to precisely date some steps and exclude them in the hypothetical reconstruction of more ancient dances. 5.6 Cesare Negri Almost contemporary with Caroso was the Milanese Cesare Negri, known as "il Trombone", who was responsible for another important volume on dance entitled Le Gratie d'Amore , published in 1602. The dedication of Gratie d'Amore , in the editions of 1602 and 1604, is addressed to Philip III of Spain. No exact biographical information is known about Negri, a dancer and dance teacher. He was most likely born in Milan around 1536 and was a pupil of Pompeo Diobono, whose Milanese school he took over when he moved to France, but being much in demand as a teacher and choreographer, he often moved from the Lombard city, which at that time had become a Spanish province. The references that can be drawn from the second chapter of his work suggest that he was always at the service of the various Spanish dignitaries who succeeded one another in the government of Milan in the second half of the sixteenth century and that his numerous travels, accompanied by performances in various Italian cities, are always to be linked to the movements of the gentleman who served at that moment. His presence is confirmed in Malta, Genoa, Cremona and then in France. He must have enjoyed a certain fame abroad too because the second and third books of his work were translated and published in Spain. In 1574, in Milan, he was entrusted with the choreography of the festival in honor of Don Giovanni of Austria, half-brother of Philip II of Spain and winner of the battle of Lepanto against the Turks. Negri's work constitutes one of the most important sources of information on late Renaissance dance. The treatise contains descriptions of steps, accompanied by information on duration and 43 choreographies complete with music in personal notation and lute tablature. The music that appears in Gratie d'Amore is all by the author; some were transcribed by him for "a part of lute sound and tablature" from compositions then in vogue by authors of the second half of the 16th century such as, for example, the four-voice aria So ben mi chi ha buon tempo by Orazio Vecchi, well-known madrigalist of the late 16th century. 5.7 Other treatise writers One of the first treatises on dance in the 16th century was written by Antoine Arena (1500-1563), a French poet and jurist, with the title (To his fellow students). The work, composed in verse in Macaronic Latin, reworked several times between 1520 and 1530, describes in addition to the bassa danza, the pavana, the gagliarda, the tourdion and the current. Ad suos companionnes studiantes Closer to Negri's work than to that of Caroso, is the , by the Perugian Ercole Santucci, a rather recently discovered manuscript dated 1614, divided into "Three Treatises" with which every student can easily learn “every kind of dance, without any other school”. Master of the Dance Another significant figure of the late sixteenth century is Livio Lupi da Caravaggio, author of a treatise entitled published in Palermo in two subsequent editions in 1600 and in 1607. Mutanze di Gagliarda, Tordiglione, Passo e mezzo, Canari e Passeggi, Towards the end of the century, when the gagliarda was the most practiced dance, texts of gagliarda variations became widespread, such as that of Prospero Luti da Sulmona, published in 1589. Lutio Compasso's text, published in Florence in 1611, entitled composed by Lutio Compasso Romano on the Gagliarda's mutanzie no longer brought to light, also deals with the gagliarda. Ballo Della Gagliarda Opera Nuova e Dilettevole