Historical dance
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Historical dance is a term covering a wide variety of Western European-based dance types from the past as they are danced in the present. Today historical dances are danced as performance, for pleasur
Victorian ballroom dances at the Gaskell Ball in Oakland, California
A Historical Colonial Ball in the Albert Hall Canberra (circa 2016) (sepia)
History of dance
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The history of dance is difficult to access because dance does not often leave behind clearly identifiable physical artifacts that last over millennia, such as stone tools, hunting implements or cave
Historical dance
…types, however, must be reconstructed from less reliable evidence such as surviving notations and instruction manuals. For performance dancing, see History of dance. Very little evidence survives about medieval dance except what can be gleaned from paintings and works of literature from this time period. Some names…
Veiled dancer, ancient Greek terracotta figurine from Myrina, c. 150–100 BC. Louvre Museum
Shiva as Nataraja (Lord of Dance)
Details from a copy of a 10th-century painting Night Revels of Han Xizai by Gu Hongzhong, depicting a dancer performing a dance known in the Tang dynasty.
Dancers on a piece of ceramic from Cheshmeh-Ali (Shahr-e-Rey), Iran, 5000 BC now at the Louvre