A Brief History of Ballroom Dancing You May not Know

In the 20th century, it seemed that elite social classes liked to enjoy ballroom dance. The couple’s concept of ballroom dance makes it popular at luxury parties. Nowadays, ballroom dance spread rapidly. Ballroom dances are performed in school or public dance events, dance exhibitions, or even formal competitions.

To a professional ballroom dancer, the first lesson of them about ballroom dance is the history of ballroom dance. This help the dancers understand more about the spirit of dance. If you love ballroom dance and want to search for the origin of ballroom dance, this article is made for you.

A Brief History of Ballroom Dancing

“Ballroom dancing” originated from the Latin word “ballare”. The meaning of the word is dancing. “Ballare” will come to our mind with a large room used for dancing purposes. In the very first of Ballroom dance history, only the elite classes had the privileged to join in the ballroom dancing parties. In another scenario, the social dance of the lower classes were folk dances. Come up with the change of era, the boundaries between the elite and lower classes seem to be removed. Ballroom dancing is for all. Everyone can join in Waltz, Foxtrot, Pasodoble dance, and so on.

The history of ballroom dance started in the 16th century

In the 16th century, Jehan Tabourot published a document named Orchésographie. The document introduced a dance that he observed in 1580 in Germany. He is impressed by the concept of a dance of two dancers. They closely move together, even their faces touch in some moving. Orchésographie seems to be the first document written about ballroom dance in the world. 

Time flies like an arrow. The dance that Jehan Tabourot observed in Germany is just an improvisation performance of two dancers. In the 18th century, the couple dance named Waltz was popular in European cities and the countryside. 

19th century – Waltz developed the history of ballroom dancing

At the current time, there was still a thick boundary between the lower and the upper class. The case is that both noblemen and servants dancing together leads to a big argument. In the eyes of some writing of this time, it is described as a shame or an indecency.

Overcoming initial social awkwardness, the music of Mozart, and the charm of the couple’s dance style, Waltz, subjugated all classes of the society. Waltz was famous in Vienna. Then it spread rapidly to England in the early 1800s by infantry soldiers. In addition, the ¾ time of Waltz was developed by two famous composers – Johann Strauss and Franz Lanner in 19 century. 

 

 

 

 

 

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *