The body as medium — ballet, modern and contemporary technique, choreography, and the traditions danced socially.
10 topics · 17 curated works
No prior grounding assumed.
The English Dancing Master
John Playford · 1651
Collects the tunes and figures of English country dances as danced socially, treating the dance itself as living on the floor among ordinary dancers…
+3 more at this level
Assumes you know the vocabulary.
Orchésographie
Thoinot Arbeau · 1589
Teaches French Renaissance social dances through a dialogue between a dance master and his pupil, pairing each dance's steps with a printed rhythmic…
+6 more at this level
Primary sources and full treatments.
Nobiltà di Dame
Fabritio Caroso · 1600
Sets down the steps, music and etiquette of forty-nine Italian courtly ball dances, arguing correct dancing is inseparable from the wider discipline…
+5 more at this level
12 of 17 works
John Playford
Collects the tunes and figures of English country dances as danced socially, treating the dance itself as living on the floor among ordinary dancers rather than on a stage.
link checked 17 Sept 2026Lilly Grove
Surveys dance across historical periods and cultures — from ritual and folk dance to the ballet and ballroom of its own day — arguing that a society's dances reveal its social structure as clearly as its laws or its art.
440 pageslink checked 17 Sept 2026Gaston Vuillier
Traces dancing from religious ritual and ancient spectacle through court ballet and the ballroom of his own century, arguing that each era's dance fashions express its manners and social life rather than existing as mere amusement.
350 pageslink checked 17 Sept 2026Vernon Castle & Irene Castle
Codifies the foxtrot, tango and other new couple dances for a mass audience, arguing modern social dancing should be simplified and standardised rather than left to informal local fashion.
link checked 17 Sept 2026Thoinot Arbeau
Teaches French Renaissance social dances through a dialogue between a dance master and his pupil, pairing each dance's steps with a printed rhythmic notation aligned to its music — among the earliest attempts to fix dance in writing rather than transmit it only by imitation.
96 pageslink checked 17 Sept 2026Troy Kinney & Margaret West Kinney
Argues dance is a primary art on a level with painting or sculpture, tracing its logic across ballet, social dance and non-Western forms rather than treating it as mere entertainment.
link checked 17 Sept 2026Isadora Duncan
Rejects codified ballet technique for movement drawn from nature and the solar plexus, arguing dance should express inner feeling rather than execute trained steps.
link checked 17 Sept 2026Jane Sherman
Reconstructs fifty-six dances of the Denishawn company from the author's own memory, notes and the recollections of surviving company members, arguing these works — which shaped Martha Graham and Doris Humphrey in turn — would otherwise survive nowhere, since none was ever filmed or notated.
224 pagesMerce Cunningham & John Cage (Walker Art Center)
Cunningham and Cage explain choreographing and composing by chance procedure rather than by intention, arguing that removing personal habit from the decision opens movement and sound to possibilities neither would have chosen.
link checked 17 Sept 2026Melissa Ellamil, Joshua Berson, Jen Wong, Louis Buckley & Daniel S. Margulies
Finds that a real crowd's spontaneous dance synchrony tracks a song's tempo and rhythmic strength rather than dancers copying each other, tying the music's structure directly to collective movement.
link checked 17 Sept 2026Petri Hoppu, Egil Bakka & Anne Margrete Fiskvik
Traces the minuet's path from Nordic royal courts into peasant folk practice and its twentieth-century revival, arguing the dance's social meaning shifted with each class that adopted it rather than the steps themselves ever changing much.
586 pageslink checked 17 Sept 2026Fabritio Caroso
Sets down the steps, music and etiquette of forty-nine Italian courtly ball dances, arguing correct dancing is inseparable from the wider discipline of noble bearing and manners.
link checked 17 Sept 2026