A Treatise on the Art of Dancing

A Treatise on the Art of Dancing

This text uses utf-8 (unicode) file encoding. If the apostrophes and quotation marks in this paragraph appear as garbage, you may have an incompatible browser or unavailable fonts. First, make sure that the browsers character set or file encoding is set to Unicode (UTF-8). You may also need to change your browsers default font. In addition to the ordinary page numbers, the printed text labeled the recto (odd) pages of the first two leaves of each 8-page signature. These will appear in the left margin as A, A2... What I have here to say is rather in the nature of an apology than of a preface or advertisement. The very title of a Treatise upon the art of dancing by a dancing-master, implicitly threatens so much either of the exageration of the profession, or of the recommendation of himself, and most probably of both, that it cannot be improper for me to x bespeak the readers favorable precaution against so natural a prejudice. My principal motive for hazarding this production is, indisputably, gratitude. The approbation with which my endeavours to please in the dances of my composition have been honored, inspired me with no sentiment so strongly as that of desiring to prove to the public, that sensibility of its favor; which, in an artist, is more than a duty. It is even one of the means of obtaining its favor, by its inspiring that aim at perfection, xi A2 in order to the deserving it, which is unknown to a merely mercenary spirit. Under the influence of that sentiment, it occurred to me, that it might not be unpleasing to the public to have a fair state of the pretentions of this art to its encouragement, and even to its esteem, laid before it, by a practitioner of this art. In stating these pretentions, there is nothing I shall more avoid than the enthusiasm arising from that vanity or self-conceit, which leads people into the ridicule of over-rating the xii merit or importance of their profession. Ishall not, for example, presume to recommend dancing as a virtue; but I may, without presumption, represent it as one of the principal graces, and, in the just light, of being employed in adorning and making Virtue amiable, who is far from rejecting such assistence. In the view of a genteel exercise, it strengthens the body; in the view of a liberal accomplishment, it visibly diffuses a graceful agility through it; in the view of a private or public xiii entertainment, it is not only a general instinct of nature, expressing health and joy by nothing so strongly as by dancing; but is susceptible withall of the most elegant collateral embellishments of taste, from poetry, music, painting, and machinery. ......Buy Now (To Read More)

Product details

Ebook Number: 24643
Author: Gallini, Giovanni-Andrea
Release Date: Feb 19, 2008
Format: eBook
Language: English