s probably nowhere varied to such a degree as in the provinces of Germany; where the well-known dances of one village are strangers in the adjacent hamlet; their songs of mirth and merriment have no less different airs and movements, though they are all marked with that of gaiety. Their dances are pleasing and engaging, because the offspring of simple nature; their motions express joy and pleasure; and the exactness with which the whole is performed, gives a peculiar agreeableness to their steps, gestures, and attitudes. Do they spring?—a hundred persons, assembled round an oak, or some ancient pillar, seize the time at one instant, bound up and descend with the same exactness. Do they wish to mark the measure by a coup-de-pied?—all strike with one consent; or when they catch up their women, you see them all in the air at an equal height, nor do they descend but at the precise note that marks the time.
The counter-point, which is doubtless the touchstone of a delicate ear, is to them an object of no difficulty; hence their dance is so particularly animated, and the nicety of that organ has the effect of giving their different motions an air of gaiety and variety altogether exquisite.
A dancer whose ear is untuned to harmony, displays his steps without order or regularity, wanders from his part, and pursues the measure without being able to reach it; devoid of judgment, his dancing has neither sentiment nor expression; and the music which should direct his motions, regulate his steps, and guide his time, serves only to expose his imperfections and insufficiency. The study of music should therefore be applied to for the purpose of obviating this defect, and giving more sensibility and exactness to the organs of hearing.
It will not be expected that we should proceed to give a description of all the intricacies and combinations of steps that are or can be exerted in dancing; or enlarge on the mechanical particulars of the art. A dissertation on the latter would be insipid and distasteful; for the language of the feet and limbs is addressed to the eyes, not to the ears: and a detail of the former would be endless, since every dancer has his peculiar manner of joining or varying the time. It may be sufficient just to mention on this point, that it is in dancing as in music, and with dancers as with musicians: Dancing does not abound with more fundamental steps than music with notes; but there are octaves, breves, semibreves, minims, crotchets, double and treble crotchets; times to count, and measures to follow. This mixture, however, of a small number of steps, and a few notes, furnishes dancers with a multitude of connexions and a variety of figures; taste and genius will always find a source of novelty in arranging them in different manners, and to express various ideas. Slow and lengthened, or quick and precipitate steps, and the time correspondently varied, give birth to this endless diversity.
Country-Dance. See Country-Dance.
Country-Dance, commonly so written, and hence seeming to imply a rustic way of dancing borrowed from country people or peasants, is by others supposed to be a corruption of the French Contre-danse, where a number of persons placing themselves opposite one to another begin a figure.
Rope-Dancer, (jobanobates), a person who walks, leaps, dances, and performs several other feats, upon a small rope or wire.
The ancients had their rope-dancers as well as we. They had four several ways of exercising their art: The first vaulted, or turned round the rope like a wheel round its axis, and there hung by the heels or neck. The second flew or slid from above, resting on their stomach, with the arms and legs extended. The third ran along a rope stretched in a right line or up and down. Lastly, the fourth not only walked on the rope, but made surprising leaps and turns thereon. They had likewise the cremonobates or orobates; that is, people who walked on the brink of precipices. Nay more, Suetonius in Galba, c. 6. Seneca in his 85th Epistle, and Pliny, lib. viii. c. 2, make mention of elephants, that were taught to walk on the rope.
St Vitus's Dance. See Medicine Index.
Dancette, in Heraldry, is when the outline of any bordure, or ordinary, is indented very largely, the largeness of the indentures being the only thing that distinguishes it from indented.
Dancing. See Dance.
Dancing Girls of Egypt. See Alme.
Dancing-girls are employed all over the east, as affording great diversion at all public entertainments. They are all prostitutes; and by the laws of their society, are bound to refuse no one for their price, which is rated according to their beauty and other accomplishments. There are even particular sets of them appropriated to the service of the Gentoo temples, and the use of the Brahmin priests who attend them. These poor creatures say that they were first debauched by their god, and afterwards by him consigned over to the use of the priests who belong to his temples.
These dancing-girls, whether in a settled or unsettled condition, live in a band or community under the direction of some superannuated female of the same profession, under whom they receive a regular education, and are trained up in all the arts of love and pleasing, like scholars in an academy. Thus they acquire the art of captivating the affections of the other sex to such a degree, that nothing is more common than for one of the princes or chief people of the country to take a liking to one of these girls, and waste immense sums on her, though at the same time their own harem is stocked with beauties far superior, and who are, besides, possessed of the natural modesty of the sex, to which the others have not the smallest pretensions. Thus some of these girls acquire immense wealth. In the neighbourhood of of Goa, for instance, on a part of the continent bordering on the district of that island, the dancing-girls founded a village, after being driven from Goa by the zeal of the archbishop. Here they reside in a body corporate, and attend the parties of pleasure of the noblemen and principal inhabitants, for it is not every one's purse that can afford them. Here many of them acquire considerable fortunes by this scandalous traffic, and throw it into a common stock for the sake of carrying on merchandise; being concerned in shipping and the most profitable voyages, for which they have regular factors and brokers.
The dress of these women varies according to the country they live in; but in all it is the most gorgeous imaginable. They are loaded with jewels, literally from top to toe, since even on their toes they wear rings. Their necks are adorned with carcanets, their arms with bracelets, and their ankles with chains of gold and silver, often enriched with precious stones. They also wear nose jewels, which at first have an odd appearance, but to which the eye is soon reconciled. In Indostan, these dancing-girls, as well as the other women of the country, have a peculiar method of preserving and managing their breasts, which at the same time makes no inconsiderable part of their finery. They inclose them in a pair of hollow cases, exactly fitted to them; made of very light wood, linked together and buckled at the back. These at once confine their breasts so that they cannot grow to any disgustfully exuberant size; though, from their smoothness and pliancy, they play so freely with every motion of the body, that they do not crush the tender texture of the flesh in that part, like the stiff whalebone stays in use among the Europeans. The outside of them is spread over with a thin-plate of gold or silver, or set with gems, if they can afford it. Another occasional ornament the dancing-girls put on, particularly when they resort to their gallants, viz. a necklace of many loose turns, composed of flowers strung together, which they call mogreets, somewhat resembling Spanish double jellamy, but of a much stronger and more agreeable fragrant odour, and far preferable to any perfumes. "They have nothing," says Mr Grofe, "of that nauseous boldness which characterizes the European prostitutes, their style of seduction being all softness and gentleness."
With regard to the performances of these women as dancers, we have various accounts. The author of Memoirs of the late War in Asia, acquaints us "that their attitudes as well as movements are not ungraceful. Their persons are delicately formed, gaudily attired, and highly perfumed. By the continuation of wanton attitudes, they acquire, as they grow warm in the dance, a frantic lasciviousness themselves, and communicate, by a natural contagion, the most voluptuous desires to the beholders." Mr Ives seems to have been very cool on this subject. "I could not (says he) see anything in their performance worthy of notice. Their movements are more like tumbling or flowing postures than dancing. Their dress is thin and light; and their hair, necks, ears, arms, wrists, fingers, legs, feet, and even their toes, are covered with rings of gold and silver, made after a clumsy manner. They wear two rings in their noses; and by their staring looks and odd gesticulations, you would rather suspect them to be mad women than morris-dancers. The Dancing band of music that attends them is not less singular in its way: it is chiefly composed of three or four men, who hold two pieces of bell-metal in their hands, with which they make an incessant noise; another man beats what he is pleased to call a drum; and that they may want vocal music to complete the band, there are always two others appointed to sing. These last generally lay in their mouths a good loading of betel-nut before they begin; which, after having been well chewed, tingles the saliva with such a redness, that a stranger would judge them to bleed at the mouth by too violent an exertion of their voice. These gentry are called ticky taw boys, from the two words ticky taw, which they continually repeat, and chant with great vehemence. The dancing-girls are sometimes made use of in their religious ceremonies, as when the priests bring forth the images of their gods into the open fields on a car ornamented with lascivious figures, these girls dance before the images amidst a great crowd of people; and having been selected for their superior beauty, are very profitable to their masters the priests, who are said to prostitute them to all comers."
Mr Grofe informs us, that "these dances would hardly at first relish with Europeans, especially as they are accompanied with a music far from delightful, consisting of little drums called gumgums, cymbals, and a sort of pipe, which makes a hideous din, and are played on by men, whose effeminacy, grimaces, and uncouth shrivelled features, all together shock the eye and torture the ear. However by use we become reconciled to the noise, and may observe some not unpleasing airs, with which the dancers keep time: the words often express the matter of a pantomime dance, such as a lover courting his mistress; a procurer bringing a letter, and endeavouring to seduce a woman from one gallant in favour of another; a girl, timorous and afraid of being caught in an intrigue. All these love-scenes the girls execute in character dances, and with no despicable expression, if they are proficient in their art; for then their gestures, air, and steps, are marking and well adapted. In some of their dances, even in public, modestly is not much respected by the lascivious attitudes into which they throw themselves, without exposing any nudity; being richly clad and decked with jewels after their manner. But in private parties to which they are called, as in gardens, they give themselves a great looie, and have dances in reserve; in which, though still without any grossness, in discovering their bodies, they are mistresses of such motions and lewdness of looks and gestures as are perhaps more provoking."
**Dandelion.** See Leontodon, Botany Index.
**Dandini, Pietro,** an eminent painter, was born at Florence in 1646, and received his first instructions in the art of painting from Valero Spada, who excelled in small drawings with a pen. Whilst he was under the care of that artist, he gave such evident proofs of a ready genius, that he was then placed as a disciple with his uncle Vicencio Dandini, a master of great reputation through all Italy, who had been bred up under Pietro da Cortona. He afterwards travelled through most of the cities of Italy, studying the works of those who were most distinguished; and resided for a long time at Venice, where he copied the paintings paintings of Titian, Tintoretto, and Paolo Veronese. He next visited Parma and Modena, to design the works of Correggio; omitting no opportunity that might contribute to improve his hand or his judgment.
When he returned to Florence, the grand duke Cosimo III. the grand duchess Victoria, and the prince Ferdinand, kept him perpetually employed, in fresco painting as well as in oil; his subjects being taken not only from sacred or fabulous history, but from his own invention and fancy, which frequently furnished him with such as were odd and singular, and especially with whimsical caricatures. He died in 1712.—This master had a most extraordinary talent for imitating the style of even the most celebrated ancient painters of every school, particularly Titian, Veronese, and Tintoretto; and with a force and elegance, equal to his subjects of history, he painted portraits, landscapes, architecture, flowers, fruit, battles, animals of all kinds, and likewise sea-pieces; proving himself an universal artist, and excellent in every thing he undertook.
He had a son, Ostaffio, who proved not inferior to him in any branch of his profession, and was an honour to his family and his country.
Dandini, Cesare, history painter, was born at Florence; and was the elder brother and first instructor of Vincenzo Dandini, the uncle of Pietro. This master had successively studied as a disciple with Cavalier Curadi, Paffignano, and Cristofano Allori; from whom he acquired a very pleasing manner of designing and colouring. He was extremely correct in his drawing, and finished his pictures highly. Several noble altar-pieces in the churches of Florence are of his hand; and one, which is in the chapel l'Annonciata, is particularly admired.