DANCING. 



necessarily assumed some degree of me- 

 thod, to prevent collision. Such may 

 have been the principal cause of dancing; 

 another arises from certain combinations 

 of sounds, which, vibrating 1 strongly upon 

 the air, communicates an impulse to the 

 delicately sensible something residing in 

 the nervous system ; when the sounds are 

 musical, the limbs are compelled to an- 

 swer to them, and whether they are 

 merely sufficient to produce a march, or 

 measured steps, or powerful enough to 

 excite violent action, they equally belong 

 to dancing. In order to demonstrate the 

 truth of the above remarks, it may be 

 necessary to mention the present state of 

 dancing in savage life; the native's of 

 Africa, particularly, carry it to the most 

 extravagant excess; a few strinjjsstretch- 

 ed across a dried calabash, struck by the 

 fingers, producing a set of deep diacor- 

 dant tones, is a sufficient stimulus for the 

 inhabitants of a village to weary nature 

 completely, and this passion never leaves 

 even the unhappy slaves conveyed thence 

 to the West Indies and America, who 

 dance away those hours granted them 

 for repose. The Indians of North Ame- 

 rica, more ferocious in their manners, 

 have their war dances, and others suited 

 to the dreadful operation of torturing 

 their prisoners. The natives of the places 

 discovered by captain Cooke entertained 

 him with well contrived movements by 

 their experienced dancers, and he wit- 

 nessed others locally festive and funereal; 

 and the Mexicans dance in a barbarous 

 style to the sounds of drums and pipes, 

 similar to those of Otaheite. 



Having thus shewn that dancing is less 

 an art, than a natural effect of joy and 

 lively musical sounds, it will be necessary 

 to trace its history when polished and im- 

 proved by art ; some indeed consider it 

 as a branch of the fine arts, and closely 

 allied to dramatic poetry. Dancing was 

 used by the refined nations of antiquity 

 as a religious tribute ; the apostate Israel- 

 ites danced round their golden calf; and 

 at the more improved period, when 

 king David composed his inspired lines, 

 the Supreme Being received public ho- 

 mage in solemn movements; and that 

 monarch, affected by the most lively joy 

 at the return of the sacred ark from 

 captivity, danced before it, with the 

 greatest fervour, in the grand procession 

 which restored it to the lawful proprie- 

 tors. 



Plato classes the dances of antiquity 

 under three heads : the gymnopediqHe, 

 performed by naked children, which 



VOL. IV. 



were preparatory to the enoplian, or 

 pyrrliic, danced by young men armed, in 

 which they were taught the movements 

 necessary for attack or defence ; the 

 Spartans decreed by law, that all male 

 youths, who had attained their fifth year, 

 should be trained to these military dan- 

 ces. The second class, mentioned by 

 Plato, was solely for amusement; amongst 

 the variety under this head, they had 

 some extremely simple, particularly the 

 ascoliasmus, performed by jumping with 

 one foot on oiled and distended bladders 

 to the sound of voices, and the kybesle- 

 sis, now known in England as the somer- 

 set ; but those, and others of their dances, 

 degenerated into voluptuousness and in- 

 decency. The third class, or the reli- 

 gious, were considered indispensable in 

 the celebration of all their mysteries; 

 the most ancient was the bacchic, the 

 most solemn the hypochematic, suited 

 to the accompaniments of a lyre and the 

 voice. Plutarch mentions a dance com- 

 posed by Theseus, and performed by 

 him and a number of youths round the 

 altar of Apollo, on his return from Crete, 

 which consisted of the strophe, the anti- 

 slrophg, and the stationary ; in the first, 

 the movements were from the right to 

 the left ; in the second, the reverse ; and 

 in the last, the performers danced a slow 

 movement before the altar. 



The Greeks made dancing an appen- 

 dage to their dramatic representations, 

 and were imitated, and even excelled, by 

 the Romans, particularly in the Augustan 

 age, when Py lades danced and used such 

 action and gesticulation as expressed all 

 the pathetic emotions of tragedy, and 

 liathylus, his contemporary, was equally 

 happy in exhibiting the more lively pas- 

 sions. In short, such were their excel- 

 lence in ballet or pantomimic dancing, 

 that as they had brought the art to its 

 acme, so it declined with them, nor was 

 it revived till the celebration of the mar- 

 riage of Cialias, duke of Milan, with Isa- 

 bella of Arragon, in the 15th century, 

 when a Lombard nobleman exhibited a 

 ballet at Tortona of the most splendid 

 description, that excited the warmest ap- 

 probation throughout Europe, and serv- 

 ed as a model for imitation. Since the 

 above period, almost every civilized na- 

 tion has adopted stage dancing, which is 

 now arrived to great perfection in Eng- 

 land; nor has private dancing experienced 

 less attention, as many treatises have been 

 written on the subject, amongst which is 

 " Weaver's Essay towards an History of 

 Dancing;" and Tomlinson, a celebrated 



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