Barthélemy de Montagut, Louange de la Dance

Out of Print

If we know little about dances in England before the Civil War, even less information has been handed down about their composers. Barthélemy de Montagut was a French dancer who successfully sought patronage in aristocratic English circles. While he was establishing himself as a choreographer, entertainer, and stage manager, his countryman, François de Lauze, sought access to Buckingham to communicate his views on dancing. The resulting manual, the Apologie de la Danse, is one of the famous dance sources of this period. Montagut took liberties with an early draft of this treatise and dedicated it to Buckingham as his own composition; in an attempt to establish his priority, Lauze then published his own version in 1623. Montagut's text complements the better-known version, with which it is collated in the present edition. The introduction includes both an account of the piracy affair and a survey of seventeenth-century dancing styles against the backdrop of courtly entertainment culture of the Stuart period.