The characteristics of ballo, bassadanza and the theatrical moresca are discussed in terms of where and by whom they were performed, and why. Chapter 1 discusses the interaction between dance and the upper ranks of society, and the place of dance within education and culture. Then follow five elegantly constructed and persuasively argued chapters to reinforce the common ground between humanist thinking and the extant dance treatises.

The book is very well designed, with clear guidance set out in the introduction as to its parameters (sources and context, scope and limits) and its purpose (to integrate intellectual discussion concerning humanism with information about dance, in a way that is accessible to scholars from widely different backgrounds). In particular, the comparison of Domenico's writings on dance with the writings on architecture and painting by Leon Battista Alberti (a fellow courtier at Ferrara), is striking. She persuasively argues that Domenico and his followers wanted and were able to write a philosophical framework for dance as a liberal art precisely because it shared the same theoretical principles as other liberal arts: it was not the dancing that was new but the atmosphere of intellectual discourse that encouraged and facilitated a humanistic approach to the subject. Her argument throughout the book is based on the premise that the dancing masters who produced the three major dance treatises of mid-15th-century Italy-Domenico da Piacenza and his two disciples Antonio Cornazano and Guglielmo Ebreo da Pesaro- developed their theories in a milieu permeated by humanist thought about all aspects of the liberal arts. Modern writers on Renaissance culture have tended to overlook the significance of dance, but Jennifer Nevile remedies the omission by placing the subject firmly back where it belongs-deep in the very fabric of intellectual thought and social life of the ruling classes in 15th-century Italy. Jennifer Nevile's study brings a fresh approach to Italian Renaissance dance, not simply as a form of physical expression but also as an integral part of humanist culture.

Eloquent person dance