There are many references to a sliding or gliding dance that would evolve into the waltz that date from 16th century Europe, including the representations of the
printmaker Hans Sebald Beham. The French philosopher
Michel de Montaigne wrote of a dance he saw in 1580 in
Augsburg, where the dancers held each other so closely that their faces touched. Kunz Haas (of approximately the same period) wrote, "Now they are dancing the godless
Weller or
Spinner."
[1] "The vigorous peasant dancer, following an instinctive knowledge of the weight of fall, uses his surplus energy to press all his strength into the proper beat of the bar, thus intensifying his personal enjoyment in dancing."
[1] Around 1750, the lower classes in the regions of
Bavaria,
Tyrol, and
Styria began dancing a couples dance called
Walzer.
[2] The
Ländler, also known as the
Schleifer, a country dance in
3
4 time, was popular in
Bohemia,
Austria, and Bavaria, and spread from the countryside to the suburbs of the city. While the eighteenth century upper classes continued to dance the
minuets (such as those by
Mozart,
Haydn and
Handel), bored noblemen slipped away to the balls of their servants.
[3]
....
It became fashionable in
Britain during the
Regency period, having been made respectable by the endorsement of
Dorothea Lieven, wife of the Russian ambassador.
[11] Diarist
Thomas Raikes later recounted that "No event ever produced so great a sensation in English society as the introduction of the waltz in 1813."
[12] In the same year, a sardonic tribute to the dance by Lord Byron was anonymously published (written the previous autumn).
[13][14] Influential dance master and author of instruction manuals, Thomas Wilson published
A Description of the Correct Method of Waltzing in 1816.
[15] Almack's, the most exclusive club in London, permitted the waltz, though the entry in the
Oxford English Dictionary shows that it was considered "riotous and indecent" as late as 1825. In
The Tenant of Wildfell Hall, by
Anne Brontë, in a scene set in 1827, the local vicar Reverend Milward tolerates quadrilles and country dances but intervenes decisively when a waltz is called for, declaring "No, no, I don't allow that! Come, it's time to be going home."
[16]
en.wikipedia.org
Thanks for the insightful analysis of the accumulative affects of this project.
