The Shift to a New Art Form.

All of the dances described so far come under the heading "conventional"—that is, they consist of a single set of steps and movements which are to be repeated over and over throughout the length of the dance. Although there were many different types of dances, which resulted in a rich variety of steps and movements, a dancer needed only to learn a single set of steps for any one type; once the basic steps were learned, they could be applied to any and all dances of that type (for example, a saltarello step could be danced to any and all saltarello compositions). This is not to imply that the dancing was static; as the descriptions from "Il sapporitto" and Roman de la Rose suggest, the dancers were free to add variations, as well as other body motions, to...