"Dancing, or saltation, is both a pleasant and a profitable art, which confers and preserves health: it is proper to youth, agreeable to the old, and suitable for all, provided fitness of time and place are observed....
And it is a useful device for ascertaining whether a person be defourmed by the gout... or if they emit an unpleasant odour, as of dead meat."
Arbeau " Orchesographie " 1588
"What clipping, what culling, what kissing and bussing, what smouching and slobbering of one another, what filthy groping and unclean handling is not practiced everywhere in these dancing? And wheras they conclude it is a wholesome exercise for the body, the contrary is most true: for I have known divers, by the immoderate use thereof, have become decripit and lame. Some have broke their legs with skipping, leaping, turning and vaulting, and some have come by one hurt, some by another: but never came thence without some part of his mind broken and lame."
Phillip Stubbes " The Anatomy of Abuses" 1576
"Dance is the mother of all languages" ~ W. G. Collingwood
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