ABSTRACT
“Dancing is love’s proper exercise”, writes Sir John Davies in Orchestra, or a Poem of Dancing. “Dancing (…) is as it were a necessary appendix to love matters”, 1 adds Robert Burton in The Anatomy of Melancholy. “Dancing is loves sauce”, remarks a character of John Lyly’s comedy Midas ; “can you persuade me to take delight to dance, and not love?” 2 Dancing occupies a privileged position in the enterprise of seduction, for like music, it has a triple bond with love. It presides over its inception, is one of its most powerful expressions, and showcases the realization of love in marriage:
In elite society the unison movements of the heterosexual pair of courtly dancers performing the measures articulated the solidarity of the ideal marital relationship (…) Dancing was praised for providing both an opportunity for courtship and an emblem of its optimal result. 3
