Dance was everywhere, evidence is not
Dancing was a normal part of life in the Middle Ages, from village greens to royal halls, but it is poorly documented. Steps were learned by watching and joining in, and no one needed to write them down. What we have instead are pictures, mentions in poems and chronicles, sermons complaining about dancing, and a few musical pieces that were probably intended for it. From these scraps, historians build a picture that is real but incomplete.
Singing and dancing together
A defining feature of early medieval dance is that the singing and the dancing were often the same activity. In a carole, a common form of circle or chain dance, dancers held hands and sang or answered a leader’s song, with a refrain they all took up. Some carole performers moved in a line rather than a ring. Pictures show a leader at the head and others following, sometimes with a musician at the front. In this form of dance, a separate band was not strictly required, since the dancers supplied the music themselves.
Instruments came into play on many occasions. A piper with a tabor, a fiddler or a player of the bagpipe could lead a group in a village. Larger gatherings might hire several players, and at fairs a hired musician could draw a crowd. Instrumental dance pieces such as the estampie survive in a few manuscripts, but they are the exception. Most dance tunes lived in the memory of players, and their form was probably flexible.
Where people danced
Villages. Festivals marked by holy days, such as Easter, Midsummer and harvest, usually included dancing, along with games and feasting. Dancing took place on greens, in churchyards and at markets, which became a recurring concern for churchmen. Preachers sometimes denounced dancing, especially in churchyards or on feast days, as a distraction or a source of sin. Their complaints are among our best evidence that it happened. Weddings were another common reason, and many local village customs included some form of dancing.
Towns. Guild festivals, civic processions and fairs gave townspeople regular occasions to dance and watch performers. Civic musicians such as waits played for town events.
Courts. In noble households, dancing was a social skill, a form of entertainment and a way of showing refinement. Courtiers danced at feasts, weddings and holiday celebrations, and some entertainment mixed dance with song, mime and elaborate spectacle. This area is explored more fully in a separate article, but it is worth noting that court dance and village dance were not entirely separate worlds. Songs and tunes moved up and down the social ladder, and nobles sometimes joined peasant-style dances for fun.
Not only for pleasure
Dance also had ritual and symbolic roles. Some dances were tied to the seasons, such as spring and May festivities, and some communities took part in processions that involved movement and music. The Dance of Death, or danse macabre, was a popular theme in late medieval art and writing, in which skeletons lead people of every rank in a dance toward the grave. It reflected anxieties about mortality, especially after the Black Death, and its use of dance as an image shows how familiar the idea was.
Churches themselves held an ambivalent view. Dancing in itself was not forbidden, but some forms were seen as lewd, and certain places and times were considered inappropriate. A few reports speak of groups seized by compulsive dancing in the late Middle Ages, but the causes and the details are debated, and it is best to treat those accounts with caution.
Who danced and how
Medieval pictures show men and women dancing together, and often in single-sex groups too. Clothing was ordinary or festive depending on occasion, and in noble settings the finest dress was worn. Steps seem to have been fairly simple in the earlier centuries: walking, stepping and turning in time with the song. By the 14th and 15th centuries, courtly dances became more structured, with named types and recognizable patterns, and written instruction began to appear in the 15th century. Before that, we have to rely on indirect evidence.
How much we can reconstruct
Modern groups perform reconstructed medieval dances, but these are educated guesses. The music may survive without steps, and the steps may be recorded centuries after the dance began. A careful reader should treat any claim about exactly how people danced in, say, the 12th century as an informed reconstruction rather than a certainty. What can be said with confidence is that music and dance were closely intertwined, that they occurred at every level of society, and that they mattered enough for people to preach against them, paint them and write poems about them.