The Dancing Masters at the Universities in Sweden
Before the Renaissance, dancing had existed as an uncomplicated activity for both the peasantry and the upper classes. But from the Renaissance on, dance was elevated to a new status. Those in power saw the dance as an instructional discipline for the nobility and as a means of self-aggrandizement. To insure conformity to a strict standard, dancing masters became necessary in noble courts. The dances were taught to everyone who had social ambitions, and once perfected they became marks of a gentleman’s accomplishments, on a par with fancy riding and fencing. A changed culture regulated the behaviour of the nobility, which, in order to define itself, invented the idea of civility. Erasmus’s treatise on civility reflects such rules for living, just as Castiglione's The Book of the Courtier. The physical posture was important, and the general opinion said that an elegant apparition and good manners reflected a noble soul. The court of Louis XIV with its splendour became the cultural centre of Europe, and French the tongue of a gentleman.
During the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries dancing masters as well as teachers in fencing, riding, music, drawing and modern languages were introduced both at military academies and at the universities in Europe. From the mid of the seventeenth until the mid of the nineteenth centuries dancing masters instructed at the universities of Uppsala and Lund. The aim was to prevent the nobility from escaping Sweden for other universities abroad; the nobility were needed as officers and civil servants. But also the commoner could take lessons in the courtly exercises, and the dancing masters had to teach privately as well. In the beginning of the period, most of the dancing masters were of French origin and gave the impression of a certain disorderness. Later, the dancing masters behaved more properly and most of them were of Swedish extraction. The universities expressed a somewhat ambiguous attitude towards the teachers in the courtly exercises: they were regarded as important but got lower salaries than other teachers. Peter Burke’s usage of Robert Redfield’s pair of concepts Little tradition contra Great tradition in dance is applied, and the dancing master, with an often rather simple social origin, served as a connection between his own roots in the Little tradition and his teaching in the Great tradition.
