This collection challenges the dominant understandings of 18th-century sociability by placing dance, and the training and movement of the body, at its core. Rather than thinking of dance and music as peripheral ornaments to the complex business of Enlightenment society, it highlights them as important vehicles for the development and dissemination of the ideas and practices that shaped people’s social, emotional and intellectual worlds.
Exploring the relationship between dance and sociability, and the development of both through the long 18th century, chapters in this collection span different practices in England, Scotland, colonial America, the West Indies, Germany, the Low Countries and Norway. Taking an interdisciplinary approach, they argue that dance, which was entangled with concerns about touch, dress and bodies, was integral to the ways in which ‘enlightened sociability’ was understood, performed and accepted.
Table of Contents:
Introduction: Sociability and Movement, Mark Philp, Ian Newman and Hillary Burlock (University of Warwick, UK, University of Notre Dame, USA, and University of Liverpool, UK)
Dancing Bodies
1. ‘Je ne sais quoi’: Grace, Ease, and Embodiment in Georgian Britain, Hillary Burlock (University of Liverpool, UK)
2. ‘Open to the World’: Masculinity and the Turned-out Body in England, 1720-1830, Caitlyn Lehmann (University of Melbourne, Australia)
3. 'Hopping in London': Genre and Representation of Regency Dance in Austen and Egan, Ian Newman, (Notre Dame University, USA)
Learning to Dance
4. Dance lessons: Making young people genteel in eighteenth-century Norway, Elizabeth Svarstad (Norwegian Academy of Music, Norway)
5. Dance at Home in Georgian England, Katrina Faulds (University of Southampton, UK)
6. William Bodley Francis: An English performer and dancing master in early America
Lynn Matluck Brooks (Franklin and Marshall College, USA)
Stage and Ballroom
7. Sociability and hidden connections: The ballet stage and ballroom in the long eighteenth century, Ambre Emory-Maier and Valarie Williams (Kent State University and The Ohio State University, USA)
8. ‘German’ vs. ‘Viennese’: Notes on the social and conceptual history of waltzing in the German-speaking world. Hanna Walsdorf (University of Basel, Switzerland)
9. From the Louvre to the Waltz: Changing Relationships within the Couple Dance, Moira Goff (Independent scholar)
10. Courting a dancing court in waiting: Winning hearts and minds in Brussels: Embodying a restoration monarchy (1815 – 1830), Cornelis Vanistendael (Independent Scholar)
Dance Spaces
11. Women Waltzing at Almack’s: New Freedoms and Constraints, Peggy Murray (Independent Scholar, USA)
12. Music and Dances in Edinburgh Polite Society through the Eyes of British and French Travelers, 1784-1804, Sabrina Julliet Garzon (University Sorbonne Paris Nord, France)
13. La Tumba Francesa: The dance event and the social club, Catherine Turocy (The New York Baroque Dance Company, USA) and Marcea Daiter (Antioch University, USA)
Conclusion
About the Author :
Hillary Burlock is a British Academy Postdoctoral Fellow at the University of Liverpool.
Ian Newman is Associate Professor of English at the University of Notre Dame, USA, and a fellow of the Keough-Naughton Institute for Irish Studies.
Mark Philp is Emeritus Professor of History and Politics at the University of Warwick, UK, and Emeritus Fellow of Oriel College, University of Oxford, UK.
Review :
“Any reader of eighteenth-century novels, especially the works of Jane Austen, will know that dancing was an important aspect of social life in the age of Enlightenment. The eighteenth century saw the emergence of dance as a popular form of sociability at every level of the social order; this book offers a detailed study of early modern dance that will appeal to scholars and dancers alike. It is odd that dance hasn’t figured as prominently as it should in early modern social history. This book offers a step in the right direction.”
