Measured Steps to Inclusion: Jewish Philosophical Influence in Fifteenth-Century Italian Dance

• In Event: Art, Drama, and Dance in Italy from the Renaissance to the Eighteenth Century

Abstract

During the humanist movement in quattrocento Italy, ancient philosophical texts recirculated in Italy, reopening questions about the nature of the soul and inspiring the burgeoning of arts and sciences. Within this environment, dancing masters theorized, designed, and wrote about dance as a liberal art form. They defended their art against longstanding prejudices against dance, including condemnation from Christian doctrine that classified dance as immoral behavior and exclusion from the academy which did not recognize dance as a true liberal art. While dance scholars such as Jennifer Nevile and Alessandro Arcangeli have demonstrated how quattrocento dance incorporated Neoplatonist ideals to appeal to Christian sensibilities, I contend that it is also important to consider Jewish philosophy’s influence on dance theory, especially through the work of Guglielmo Ebreo da Pesaro (1420–1484). Guglielmo was a prominent Jewish dancing master who worked within the Christian ducal courts. In 1463, he published a dance manual, DE PRATICA SEU ARTE TRIPUDDI, which provides practical and theoretical instruction on the execution and philosophy of dance. In this paper, I conduct a close comparative analysis of Guglielmo’s manual with manuals written by three of his Christian contemporaries to examine how Guglielmo uniquely adapted the theories of his Christian dance master to suit his positionality as a Jewish man and later as a Christian convert. Applying the lens of dance scholar Susan Manning’s use of Tirza True Latimer’s “cross-viewing,” I argue that Guglielmo incorporated both Jewish and Christian philosophical views into his practice by double encoding common references. This strategy allowed him to make his practice accessible to members from both religious communities. In effect, his work rechoreographed how Jews could engage in mainstream culture by creating a dance form that could be practiced across religious and cultural boundaries. Through my close textual analysis, I further demonstrate how Guglielmo’s influence on dance contributed to the political aims of the Jewish community, which sought inclusion in the broader Italian society, and embedded Jewish philosophical views into common performance forms developing in the early Renaissance period.

Author

• Tamara McCarty, Arkin University of Creative Arts and Design