The Violent History of Dance

Q: Why don’t men and women don’t dance together anymore? Why does everyone in the club dance solo?

A: Because men no longer wear swords.

Bear with me here.

From at least the Middle Ages up to the mid-19th Century, men of a certain rank were expected to carry and know how to handle a sword. To do so, they had to remain in constant practice. There were schools, of course, with great Maestros like Liberi, Talhoffer, Marozzo, Swetnam, and more. There were practice yards where a man of means could spend hours honing the skill. There were fight books, with illustrations of each move to be laboriously replicated live, with either a dummy or a partner.

And there was dancing.

Look at any period of European history and you’ll discover the most popular couples dance of that era reflects the fighting style of that era.

When swords were broad, thick, and heavy, the motion involved big swings of the arms, with correspondingly big steps as you hacked at person after person. Compare this to a move that shows up in several dances of the era, the “Hey”, with big arms and big steps leading from partner to partner, like a Scottish “Reel”. Or look to Morris Dancing, which involved men partnering each other and often beating together sticks in a precise pattern. Hack and slash warfare led…