[Illustration]

A

TREATISE

on the

ART

of

DANCING.

By _Giovanni-Andrea Gallini_.

_LONDON_:

Printed for the AUTHOR; And Sold by R. DODSLEY, in _Pall-Mall_; T. BECKET and P. A. DE HONDT, in the _Strand_; J. DIXWELL, in _St. Martin's-Lane_, near _Charing-Cross_; and At Mr. BREMNER's Music Shop, opposite _Somerset-House_, in the _Strand_.

MDCCLXXII.

The TABLE

of CONTENTS.

_Of the Antient Dance_ p. 17

_Of Dancing in General_ 49

_Of sundry Requisites for the Perfection of the Art of Dancing_ 89

_Some Thoughts on the Utility of Learning to Dance, and especially upon the Minuet_ 139

_Summary Account of various Kinds of Dances in different Parts of the World_ 181

_Of Pantomimes_ 227

ADVERTISEMENT.

What I have here to say is rather in the nature of an apology than of a preface or advertisement. The very title of a Treatise upon the art of dancing by a dancing-master, implicitly threatens so much either of the exageration of the profession, or of the recommendation of himself, and most probably of both, that it cannot be improper for me to bespeak the reader's favorable precaution against so natural a prejudice. My principal motive for hazarding this production is, indisputably, gratitude. The approbation with which my endeavours to please in the dances of my composition have been honored, inspired me with no sentiment so strongly as that of desiring to prove to the public, that sensibility of its favor; which, in an artist, is more than a duty. It is even one of the means of obtaining its favor, by its inspiring that aim at perfection, in order to the deserving it, which is unknown to a merely mercenary spirit. Under the influence of that sentiment, it occurred to me, that it might not be unpleasing to the public to have a fair state of the pretentions of this art to its encouragement, and even to its esteem, laid before it, by a practitioner of this art. In stating these pretentions, there is nothing I shall more avoid than the enthusiasm arising from that vanity or self-conceit, which leads people into the ridicule of over-rating the merit or importance of their profession. I shall not, for example, presume to recommend dancing as a virtue; but I may, without presumption, represent it as one of the principal graces, and, in the just light, of being employed in adorning and making Virtue amiable, who is far from rejecting such assistence. In the view of a genteel exercise, it strengthens the body; in the view of a liberal accomplishment, it visibly diffuses a graceful agility through it; in the view of a private or public entertainment, it is not only a general instinct of nature, expressing health and joy by nothing so strongly as by dancing; but is susceptible withall of the most elegant collateral embellishments of taste, from poetry, music, painting, and machinery.

Table of contents (by pages)

• 1: A Treatise on the Art of Dancing by Gallini
• 2: In most of the nations among the antients
• 3: As the signification of the words strophe and antistrophe
• 4: The Bacchanalians strolled the country
• 5: And bind the husbandmen to their plough
• 6: From the statue of the goddess
• 7: Pilades in the serious or tragic dance
• 8: An inconsistence of which the antients had no idea
• 9: That there were also various abuses of dancing
• 10: To place its excellence in capers
• 11: For want of this appropriation of gesture and attitude
• 12: The antient ones were full of sublime simplicity
• 13: Than as farce is to tragedy or to genteel comedy
• 14: While the dancer shall have already begun another
• 15: In the half serious stile we observe vigor
• 16: And save them from too constant a simmetry
• 17: Upon mentioning the pantomime art
• 18: Contributes to the accomplishment of the dancer
• 19: Indolence is the bane of our art
• 20: Farete tutti i passi che sapete fare
• 21: Respectively adapted to each gradation
• 22: An effeminate man appears even worse than a masculine woman
• 23: As to the composition of dances
• 24: That in the composition of his dance
• 25: The martial simphony that accompanied them
• 26: Where dances are well composed
• 27: In quality of a dancing master
• 28: Affect a sort of carelessness in their gait
• 29: The Spartans carried this to perhaps an excess
• 30: The minuet offers its services
• 31: Under such pretended masters of this art
• 32: But to execute a minuet in a very superior manner
• 33: Even in those rural assemblies
• 34: This secret and relative influence of the minuet
• 35: The minuet still remaining unalterable
• 36: Who danced the hornpipe in its due perfection
• 37: The castanets the NEAPOLITANS most frequently use
• 38: Afford nothing remarkable in their dances
• 39: It is a kind of Indian Pirrhic
• 40: Some bearing maces with long handles
• 41: They cannot refrain from dancing
• 42: Represented so efficaciously to his Portugueze Majesty
• 43: But the dance of the calumet is esteemed the finest
• 44: Of the excellence of the antient pantomimes
• 45: Upon the cotemporaries of Mecenas
• 46: Should have a stile of his own
• 47: Bathillus had been the slave of Mecenas
• 48: Nay even primordially introduced by Bathillus
• 49: He had been publickly challenged by Hilas
• 50: That a cinical mock philosopher
• 51: But which would infrigidate a theatrical composition
• 52: Its unravelment more or less striking
• 53: By the antient mithology having lost that effect
• 54: Preceded by the Graces and several nimphs
• 55: A simphony mixed with the most rural instruments of music
• 56: The simphony should here express
• 57: To see the coquette so well punished