L’harmonia de l’univers: la dansa en cercle a l’edat mitjana

Abstract

Taking into account the variety of choreographic forms documented in the Middle Ages, we focus on the circular dance for its symbolic significance, its long tradition and its relevance. Circular dances can be found in an archaic festive context and reappear in the Christian liturgical context, where the “carola” and “ball rodó” (“dance in the round”) becomes the dominant dance form between the twelfth and the fourteenth century. This happens also in the ecclesiastical context, particularly to celebrate the Resurrection of Christ, although moralists in the fifteenth century made efforts to expel it from the temple and its surroundings. Apart from its sacred use of praising God, the circle dance was associated with the devil and its harmful action. It was soon used as a metonymy of theatre and stage game, associated with the Roman “ludi scaenici”, and it also became a symbol of idolatry, both of “paganism” and the biblical idolatry of the Jewish people before the golden calf. One of the most unique uses of a circular dance is the macabre dance: a typology of the dance of death in a circle that is already documented in the late fourteenth century and continued until the eighteenth century in the iconography of Central Europe.