Development.

By the early Renaissance dance had flourished in Europe for more than a thousand years. Evidence for medieval dance, though, comes to us primarily from literature and art. With the coming of the Renaissance, new dance manuals appeared in both Italy and Burgundy, the two major centers of courtly dance of the period. In Burgundy, the first of these works was written around 1420, and in Italy somewhat later, in the 1440s. The Italian examples, in particular, show that there was already a high degree of choreographical sophistication in Renaissance dance by this time. The authors of these books were courtly dance masters who lived in the houses of Italy's nobles and who were charged with training noble children and courtiers in the dance steps. These dancing masters also staged elaborate spectacles for Italy's counts and dukes that expressed the rising taste of the...