Recommended Readings
Dance in Greek and Roman Antiquity
Curtis, Lauren. Imagining the Chorus in Augustan Poetry. Cambridge, 2017.
Gianvittorio, Laura, ed. Choreutika: Performing and Theorising Dance in Ancient Greece. Pisa, 2017.
Lada-Richards, Ismene. Silent Eloquence: Lucian and Pantomime Dancing. London: Duckworth, 2007.
Lonsdale, Steven. Dance and Ritual Play in Greek Religion. Baltimore, MD, 1993.
Macintosh, Fiona, ed. The Ancient Dancer in the Modern World: Responses to Greek and Roman Dance. Oxford, 2010.
Naerebout, F. G. Attractive Performances: Ancient Greek Dance: Three Preliminary Studies. Amsterdam, 1997.
Olsen, Sarah. Solo Dance in Archaic and Classical Greece: Representing the Unruly Body. Cambridge, 2020.
Schlapbach, Karin. The Anatomy of Dance Discourse: Literary and Philosophical Approaches to Dance in the Later Graeco-Roman World. Oxford, 2018.
Schlapbach, Karin, ed. Aspects of Roman Dance Culture: Religious Cults, Theatrical Entertainments, Metaphorical Appropriations. Stuttgard, 2022.
Smith, Tyler Jo. Komast Dancers in Archaic Greek Art. Oxford, 2010.
Steiner, Deborah. Choral Constructions in Greek Culture: The Idea of the Chorus in Poetry, Art, and Social Practices of the Archaic and Early Classical Period. Cambridge, 2021.
Webb, Ruth. Demons and Dancers: Performance in Late Antiquity. Cambridge, MA, 2008.
* See, also, the Oxford Classics and Dance Bibliography by Fiona Macintosh.
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Medieval Dance
Caldwell, Mary Channen. "Dancing in Silence in Premodern Europe." Postmedieval: A Journal of Medieval Cultural Studies 14 Special Issue: Legacies of Medieval Dance, no. 2-3 (2023): 371–391.
Caldwell, Mary Channen. "Revisiting the ‘Clerical Dance Song’ in Medieval Europe." In Tanz und Musik: Perspektiven für die Historische Musikpraxis, ed. Christelle Cazaux, Martina Papiro and Agnese Pavanello. Basler Beiträge zur Historischen Musikpraxis, 29–60. Basel: Schwabe Verlag, 2024.
Caldwell, Mary Channen. "Is Medieval Choreomusicology Possible?". In Choreomusicology: Dialogues in Music and Dance, ed. Samuel N. Dorf and Helen Julia Minors, 175–208. New York: Routledge, 2025.
Chaganti, Seeta. Strange Footing: Poetic Form and Dance in the Late Middle Ages. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2018.
Dickason, Kathryn. “The Blackness of Medieval Dance,” Florilegium: The Journal of the Canadian Society of Medievalists / Société canadienne des médiévistes 39 (2022): 1–29.
Dickason, Kathryn. “Caroling Like Clockwork: Technologies of the Medieval Dancing Body in Dante’s Paradiso,” Dance Chronicle: Studies in Dance and the Related Arts 41:3 (2018): 303–334.
Dickason, Kathryn. “The Colonization of Medieval Dance,” Viator: Medieval and Renaissance Studies 54:1 (2023): 313–358.
Dickason, Kathryn. “The Dance of Musa: The Life and Afterlife of a Forgotten Medieval Holy Girl,” Religions 15:12 (2024): 1–30.
Dickason, Kathryn. “Deca-dance in the Late Middle Ages: The Case of Choreomania,” in Medieval Theatre Performance: Actors, Dancers, Automata and Their Audiences, ed. Philip Butterworth and Katie Normington (Cambridge: D.S. Brewer, 2017), pp. 141–160.
Dickason, Kathryn. “Discipline and Redemption: The Dance of Penitence in Dante’s Purgatorio,” Dante e l’Arte, special issue: “Dante e la Danza” (Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona / Biblioteca Nazionale Centrale di Firenze), 4 (2017): 67–100. [Open access: http://revistes.uab.cat/dea/article/view/v4-dickason].
Dickason, Kathryn. “Gracing the Idols: Sainte Foy and the Sanctification of Western Medieval Dance,” European Drama and Performance Studies (Paris: Classiques Garnier), special issue: “Danse et Morale: Une Approche Généalogique” ed. Marie Glon and Juan Ignacio Vallejos, 8:1 (2017): 43–69.
Dickason, Kathryn. “King David in the Medieval Archives: Toward an Archaic Future for Dance Studies,” in Futures of Dance Studies, ed. Susan Manning, Janice Ross, and Rebecca Schneider (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 2020), pp. 36–55.
Dickason, Kathryn, ed. Legacies of Medieval Dance. Special issue of postmedieval 14, no. 2 (2023). http://www.palgrave.com/gp/journal/41280/volumes-issues/latest-issue.
Dickason, Kathryn. “Pulsatile Choreography: Rhythm, (Dis)Enchantment, and Disimagination in Premodern Dance,” in Phenomenology, New Materialism, and Advances into the Pulsatile Imaginary: Rites of Disimagination, ed. Nicoletta Isar (Cham, Switzerland: Springer Nature-Palgrave Macmillan, 2024), pp. 89–116.
Dickason, Kathryn. Ringleaders of Redemption: How Medieval Dance Became Sacred. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2021.
Dickason, Kathryn. “Saltatory Spectacles: (Pre)Colonialism, Travel, and Ancestral Lyric in the Middle Ages and Raymonda." Arts 14:5 (2025): 1–36. Special issue: Artistic Imagination and Social Imaginaries—Polysemous Readings of Historical Travelling Accounts, co-edited by Eduardo Abrantes and Laura Hellsten.
McGee, Timothy J. “Dance.” In Art & Humanities Through the Eras. Vol. 3, Medieval Europe 814–1450. Edited by Kristen M. Figg and John B. Friedman, 62–91. Detroit: Thomson-Gale, 2005.
Mullally, Robert. The Carole: A Study of a Medieval Dance. Farnham, Surrey: Ashgate, 2011.
Renberg, Lynneth Miller, and Bradley Phillis. The Cursed Carolers in Context. New York: Routledge, 2021.
Renberg, Lynneth Miller. Women, Dance and Parish Religion in England, 1300-1640: Negotiating the Steps of Faith. Woodbridge, Suffolk; Rochester, NY: Boydell & Brewer, 2022.
Salmen, Walter. “Dances and Dance Music, c. 1300–1530.” In Music as Concept and Practice in the Late Middle Ages. New ed. Edited by Reinhard Strohm and Bonnie J. Blackburn, 162–190. New Oxford History of Music III.1. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001.
Silen, Karen. “Dance in Late Thirteenth-Century Paris.” In Dance, Spectacle, and the Body Politick, 1250–1750. Edited by Jennifer Nevile, 67–79. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2008.
Silen, Karen. "Elisabeth of Spalbeek: Dancing the Passion." In Women’s Work: Making Dance in Europe Before 1800. Edited by Lynn Matluck Brooks, 207-227. Studies in Dance History. Madison, WI: University of Wisconsin Press, 2008.
* See, also, the Oxford Medieval Dance Bibliography by Timothy McGee, and the Oxford Dance of Death Bibliography by Sophie Oosterwijk.
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Renaissance Dance
Brooks, Lynn Matluck, ed. Women’s Work: Making Dance in Europe Before 1800. Studies in Dance History. Madison, WI: University of Wisconsin Press, 2008.
Forrest, John. The History of Morris Dancing, 1458-1750. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1999.
Franko, Mark. The Dancing Body in Renaissance Choreography, c. 1416-1589. Birmingham, AL: Summa Publications, 1986.
Gough, Melinda. Dancing Queen: Marie de Médicis' Ballets at the Court of Henri IV. Toronto, University of Toronto Press, 2019.
McGowan, Margaret M. Dance in the Renaissance: European Fashion, French Obsession. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2008.
Nevile, Jennifer. The Eloquent Body: Dance and Humanist Culture in Fifteenth-Century Italy. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2004.
Nevile, Jennifer, ed. Dance, Spectacle, and the Body Politick, 1250-1750. Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press, 2008.
Payne, Ian. The Almain in Britain, c.1549-c.1675: A Dance Manual from Manuscript Sources. Aldershot, Hampshire: Ashgate, 2003.
* See, also, the Oxford Renaissance Dance Bibliography by Jennifer Nevile, and the Renaissance Dance Primary Sources and Secondary Sources bibliographies from the Shakespeare and Dance Project.
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Baroque Dance
Fairfax, Edmund. The Technique of Eighteenth-Century Ballet. c. Edmund Fairfax 2018. Manuscript, blog, and resources: https://eighteenthcenturyballet.com/
Franko, Mark. Dance as Text: Ideologies of the Baroque Body. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993.
Goff, Moira. The Incomparable Hester Santlow: A Dancer-Actress on the Georgian Stage. London and New York: Routledge, 2016. Also a blog: https://danceinhistory.com/
Harris-Warrick, Rebecca. Dance and Drama in French Baroque Opera. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2019.
Hilton, Wendy, Dance of Court and Theater: The French Noble Style, 1690-1725. Princeton: Princeton Book Company, 1981.
Marsh, Carol G. and Rebecca Harris-Warrick. Musical Theatre at the Court of Louis XIV: Le Mariage de la Grosse Cathos. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994.
Thorp, Jennifer, and Michael Burden, eds. Ballet de la Nuit. Hillsdale, NY: Pendragon Press, 2010.
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Dance and the Court Masque
Daye, Anne. “The Jacobean Antimasque within the Masque Context: a Dance Perspective.” PhD diss., Roehampton University, 2008.
McManus, Clare. Women on the Renaissance Stage: Anna of Denmark and Female Masquing in the Stuart Court, 1590-1619. Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2002.
Ravelhofer, Barbara. The Early Stuart Masque: Dance, Costume, and Music. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2006.
Welsford, Enid. The Court Masque: A Study in the Relationship between Poetry & the Revels. Cambridge: Russell & Russell, 1962.
* See, also, the Masques and Measures Bibliography from the Shakespeare and Dance Project.
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Shakespeare and Dance
Brissenden, Alan. Shakespeare and the Dance. Atlantic Highlands, NJ: Humanities Press, 1981, 2001.
Daye, Anne, comp. A Lively Shape of Dauncing: Dances of Shakespeare’s Time. Salisbury, Wiltshire: Dolmetsch Historical Dance Society, 1994. (practical handbook and CD) https://historicaldance.org.uk/publications/page/1994
Klett, Elizabeth, ed. Shakespeare and Dance special issue of Borrowers and Lenders 10, no. 2 (2017). http://www.borrowers.uga.edu/7165/toc
McCulloch, Lynsey. “Shakespeare and Dance.” Literature Compass 13, no. 2 (2016): 69-78. https://doi.org/10.1111/lic3.12313
McCulloch, Lynsey, and Brandon Shaw, eds. The Oxford Handbook of Shakespeare and Dance. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2019.
* See, also, the Shakespeare and Dance Studies Bibliography from the Shakespeare and Dance Project.
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Updated October 14, 2026.