Dance Embodied Politics and Court Culture in Early Modern Spain

<b>Does dance tell a story? What if anything is it intended to represent? How was it conceived in the early modern period?</b><br><br><br>This book examines the theories and political uses of dance in Spain during the period preceding and following the <i>'Poetics</i> turn' which coincided with the rule of Philip III (1598-1621) also known as the Dancing King and the onset of the reign of Philip IV. While this turning point finalised the definition of dance as an art form it was also paradoxical. Indeed this development saw the emergence of an aesthetic thought of dance within Aristotelian poetics thanks to a common court culture yet it never led to the formulation of a poetics of ballet.<br><br>By recontextualising this turning point the book examines the relationship between dance and representation during Spain's Golden Age. It revisits the initial codifications of dance in Italy and figurative experiments at the Burgundian court during the second half of the 15th century as well as their influence on subsequent practices and humanist theories of dance at the courts of Charles V and Philip II. Subsequently it focuses on the various shifts in court dance as it became a scenic art at the beginning of the seventeenth century interrogating the possibility of the king performing dance himself. The book concludes that in Spain neo-Aristotelian ideas enabled a shift from an ethical to an aesthetic problematic which saw dance whether symbolic or purely kinetic in nature as a legitimate art form to be placed at the service of the monarchy.