Occasions of State by Mulryne J. R.;

Author:Mulryne, J. R.;
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Taylor & Francis (CAM)
Published: 2019-11-19T00:00:00+00:00

Part II

Space and occasional performance

8  Space for dancing

Accommodating performer and spectator in Renaissance France

Margaret M. McGowan

An image taken from emperor Maximilian I’s Freydal illustrates dancing at court about 1500 (see Figure 8.1).1

The emperor and two ladies look out from a raised platform onto six figures performing a round dance to the sound of drum and pipe, lit by a single torch bearer. Male dancers are masked while ladies wear formal court dress with trains. This represents danced spectacle in its most simplified form: space and dress virtually unchanged from everyday use.

Such routine danced entertainment after dinner spread across Europe in the following decades. It could attain the splendour of the mascarades danced in the Great Hall of the newly constructed palace at Binche in 1549 when Emperor Charles V visited his sister, Mary of Hungary, Regent of the Low Countries.2 In a drawing of the event (see Plate 6), the emperor is shown at the far end of the hall, seated between his two sisters, with his son Philip and a few courtiers. They are looking at groups of disguised figures dancing. The space, framed by the beams of the high ceiling and adorned with tapestries, seems immense, as does the distance between performers and royal spectators. The hall was 100 feet in length and 45 feet wide, and the artist provides a composite view of episodes from the mascarades.3 To the left, a group of four knights and four ladies have just completed their dance; in the foreground, two pairs of disguised elderly dancers who had performed a German dance; and the larger group to the right – the centrepiece of the show – a danced combat between knights and savages.4 Thus, danced episodes which had been performed in sequence are depicted as happening simultaneously.

Figure 8.1 After-dinner entertainment c.1500 at the Court of Maximilian I, from Freydal des Kaisers Maximilien I. Turniere und Mummereien, II, 112.

Photo: Margaret M. McGowan.

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