Man & Woman as a dance couple

Man and Woman as a dance couple- how did it start?

Take an adventure; a dance adventure back in time to the beginnings of ballroom dance as we know it today. Travel back to ancient Greece, where ladies and gentlemen danced together for the first time in the same circle. At this time, gentlemen and ladies would only dance in separate circles.

Next, we enter the medieval period. This was the first time we know that lords and ladies were dancing "together", holding hands side by side or in a circle. The Branle de original or toss the duchess was the first dance where a gentleman put both hands on a lady.

The Renaissance era saw an explosion of dance and culture. New dances were popping up everywhere. Processional dances like the Pavane, which is the predecessor to the wedding march, were popular in European courts and the church of Spain.

Catherine De Medici was promoting dance everywhere she went. De Medici developed the first dance schools and introduced La Volta to the future queen Elizabeth. La Volta means to turn and is credited with being the predecessor to the Viennese waltz. Scandal surrounded La Volta because the gentleman would wrap his arms around the lady’s waist and lift her in the air with a step called the caper. This variation on a Galliard was banned in France and popularized in the English court.

The Baroque era was dominated by the Minuet. This 3/4time dance was the intricate dance of royalty and the upper class. With the French revolution, the minuet fell out of popularity.

Deep in the mountains of Austria in 1690, a shepherdess is said to have danced the first Landler. With the fall of the Minuet, the Landler filled the void as the people’s dance. Composers like Mozart wrote Landlers for the people instead of Minuets for the nobility.

The Landler was not accepted without some resistance. Many denounced it as a scandalous dance due to the proximity of partners. Ballroom dances in Brazil have had Native, Black, and European influence since the 19th century. European ballroom dances underwent a process of adaptation to the national common taste, mixing with the local music and dance culture that gave rise to the first genuinely national closed hold dance: the maxixe. Later, the maxixe contributed to another dance widely practiced today, the samba, and both, at first, were considered to be an affront to the “good social norms" of the time.

The process of maxixe and samba stylization was the recreation of a popular dance by the cultured elite that obeyed the standards of the upper classes as a way of recognizing the popular force of this manifestation, but without affecting the hegemonic values of the so-called high society.

Even with the prejudice against the body movements of some dances, balls were a privileged space for social interaction and were considered the main meeting place where men and women were allowed to have some "socially accepted physical contact" under the watchful eyes of their families.

With the melting pot of nationalities, more and more dances arose due to an incredible mix of rhythms and music - tango, foxtrot, quickstep, cha-cha-cha, salsa and more. Today, Ballroom and Latin dance are the unique sport activity bringing together men and women in search of harmony!